Most demographers now predict that human population will plateau | Hacker News Reader

Most demographers now predict that human population will plateau

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Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros. Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare. Women want careers too. Few countries have comprehensive parental leave.

Can’t complain about less kids and have policies which make raising kids a risky financial and life decision.

We gotta do a better job at providing for the kids we already have.

Housing is quite affordable for young couples in most US minor metros. Trying to squeeze into a few major metros is a terrible choice for young people who want a decent life.

This has not been true for a while. All the people leaving big cities for cheaper metros have now also made those metros expensive as well since it doesn’t take that many people to tighten up supply.

Yup. Anywhere appealing is now expensive. The internet/social media means that few places with any redeeming qualities that are remotely affordable stay under the radar for long.

Living in a big city offers big opportunities too though. In my city I have access to a lot of clubs for the niche interests I have. And there is always something new to discover.

I used to live in a small provincial "city" of 150.000, 250km from the country's only big city. People often mocked it was the graveyard of ambition. But to me it really felt like that. I hated living there so much.

> Trying to squeeze into a few major metros is a terrible choice for young people who want a decent life.

If remote work is a possibility, or big cities decentralize a bit, that makes sense.

We've seen during COVID, if people can move from San Francisco and keep their jobs, they will do it.

I think the flaw with this explanation is that lots of children are un/under planned. Talk to a teacher at a metropolitan public school sometime in the US for example and ask them how many students are from low income areas, it's going to be a lot. So it follows that either everyone is overdramatizing how much it costs to raise a child or that concerns about the cost aren't what's stopping people from having them and by extension it's sure not access to daycare.

Most of the cost of raising a child is the things you do to make sure they end up living a life like you did: college and neighborhood.

People who are responsible aren't having kids because its too expensive. People who are irresponsible probably aren't calculating the costs..or they don't care.

Or they know the costs will be picked up by the people paying for Medicaid/CHIP and free school lunch. Those people will now be less able to afford their own children.

Don't we want people in general to have more kids, not just middle-class people and rich people? And don't we want those kids to have healthcare and lunch at school?

Are you saying that middle class people are less able to afford children because they pay too much in taxes? Really? Taxes are a primary consideration, not the cost of housing and education?

Poor and less educated people already have more kids than middle class and more educated people.

So there seem to be systematic incentives that skew the desire to have kids.

We should work towards counteracting those systemic incentives, by making it easier for middle class, educated people to have kids (an example would be % tax breaks for each child, which would be more money for middle class people).

> We should work towards counteracting those systemic incentives, by making it easier for middle class, educated people to have kids (an example would be % tax breaks for each child, which would be more money for middle class people).

Yes, and we should also reduce poverty as well, no? So that we can make it easier for currently-poor to have kids as well?

I pay way more in taxes than I spend on housing or education. I pay more in taxes every year than I paid for 4 years of college. So yeah, taxes are definitely a bigger consideration.

Congratulations, you really do make a lot of money. Going by the averages, based on the information you shared, and assuming you live in the US, I’d say you make north of $300k per year.

Thanks for sharing that with us. Now we know that you are a member of the group that we are talking about here (the middle class and rich). Maybe you can shed some light on how members your demographic actually think about having children.

So, am I wrong? Are you avoiding having children primarily because you pay too much in taxes to afford them, and not for some other reason?

> People who are irresponsible probably aren't calculating the costs..or they don't care.

Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children? That seems to be what you are saying.

As a general rule, don't we want everyone to have kids—including poor people? What do poor people have to do to have kids "responsibly", in your view?

As a would-be parent, it is your duty to guarantee a comfortable childhood for your child. This means having a reliable and sufficient income stream to provide for a reasonably comfortable life. If you lack that sort of income, it is irresponsible to become a parent.

So to answer the question of whether poor people should have children: No, they should not. Absolutely no child deserves to knowingly live a destitute life if it can be helped.

All these comments, like this, are hilarious. I grew up below the poverty line, and it was great. Big screen TVs are not what makes life worth living. Something tells me you commenters value belongings so much because they're all you have and are.

I was surprised to find such confidently ignorant and repulsive takes. It's one thing to have your own goals for your kids, it's quite another to set some ludicrous standard for others.

I think you might be missing the point.

The apparent concern that these comments show for the well being of children is misdirection and rationalization, hiding the true intent behind anti-natalist perspectives, which are fundamentally eugenicist in nature.

At their foundation, these comments presume that there are people who deserve to have children, and that there are people that do not—in other words, that there are children that deserve to be born, and that there are children that do not deserve to be born.

Poverty is just a proxy for other qualities that would be much too controversial to articulate explicitly.

Not really, just that there is a lot of suffering (not to mention many willing adoptees) out there, and that there is no need to create more suffering by having children one cannot adequately care for, it is not some sort of hidden conspiracy theory to advance eugenics. If that is what you believe, then it is likely that nothing anyone says here will sway you out of that viewpoint. If anything, the anti-natalists will extinguish themselves anyway, so the problem solves itself.

I think you might be misreading some of these comments. I also wonder if you are aware of the history of eugenicist ideas in the west, and how enmeshed those concepts are in many every-day attitudes about who should be having children—often without people understanding the history (and original intention) of policies they espouse. I am not advancing any kind of conspiracy theory here.

And I think you misrepresent the potential harm. Anti-natalists don't just want to forgo having children. Many anti-natalists also want to discourage or prevent other people from having children. In fact, I'm sure many people making anti-natalist comments here do intend to have children themselves—they just want to discourage or prevent other people they find undesirable from having kids.

I have not seen or met any anti-natalists that explicitly want to stop others from having children, and if there are any, that's such a fringe minority as to be inconsequential (just like in other thought groups, like vegans). The vast majority of anti-natalists are like the ones in some of these comments, asking whether it is moral to have children. They are not pushing that onto others.

I have at places like PP.

Would-be parents aren't authority figures when it comes to either what the goal of parenthood should be, who meets the criteria, or what reasonably comfortable means. Would-be parents get to have their own goals based on their own constraints.

My differing opinion is that it's irresponsible to opt-in to raising a child if you lack the facilities to care for your basic needs, with a bit of margin. If one minor setback risks putting you on the street, and you have no support structure at all, probably don't try and get pregnant. You should be able to provide their basic needs until they can provide their own. That's it, except that income/expense pressure is intense enough now, in many areas, that meeting those requirements can be even more difficult than it might have been with an above-average income than in previous decades.

What is the definition of "reasonably comfortable life"? From the point of view of most of human history and most of the people currently living on earth, even the poorest people in US and Europe live _unreasonably_ comfortable lives.

If the viewpoint you promote was common anytime in history humanity would not exist today.

If you can raise your kid on a median, as in your kid isn’t spoiled and not lacking - you’re good to go.

Median? So the bottom 50% of the population as measured by wealth or income should not have children, according to you?

Median of their environment.

> So the bottom 50% of the population as measured by wealth or income should not have children, according to you?

If that means world where kids are presented with equal opportunity for happiness - then yes. To give you an example: whole class goes on a trip for X sum, one child's parents can't afford that trip. What is moral to do in this case?

Moral thing is for the child that doesn't have enough money to not go on that trip. It is a valuable lesson that to get something useful from other people you need to do something useful for them first. The difference of what you did and what you took is the money you have.

Taking children to the same trips and giving them all the same toys does not give them equal opportunities, due to natural differences of abilities and interests the children have.

I myself was a child who very often had to stay at home when my class went to cinema or to play computer games. I never would even consider to want to have one less sibling in exchange for going to more trips. In fact i would happily give most of what i had as a child in exchange for having one more brother. After all the best memories are not from expensive things, but from reading a book, or playing together with toys made from simple sticks and newspaper.

If your answer to your question is that, if a child can't go to a trip with the rest of the class then that child is better to not exist at all, then your system of beliefs is immoral and abhorrent. And it is a good thing that such a system of beliefs also leads people holding it to not reproduce and by that select such horrible thinking out of population.

You're so hellbent on proving your point that you don't even read what I write.

> Moral thing is for the child that doesn't have enough money to not go on that trip. It is a valuable lesson that to get something useful from other people you need to do something useful for them first. The difference of what you did and what you took is the money you have.

Child doesn't have enough money?! What are you even talking about?

> I myself was a child who very often had to stay at home when my class went to cinema or to play computer games. I never would even consider to want to have one less sibling in exchange for going to more trips. In fact i would happily give most of what i had as a child in exchange for having one more brother. After all the best memories are not from expensive things, but from reading a book, or playing together with toys made from simple sticks and newspaper.

And what about single children families?

> If your answer to your question is that, if a child can't go to a trip with the rest of the class then that child is better to not exist at all, then your system of beliefs is immoral and abhorrent. And it is a good thing that such a system of beliefs also leads people holding it to not reproduce and by that select such horrible thinking out of population.

I love how all of your message is focused on kid, like parents are just passive observers in all of this.

Keep searching for the boogeyman who wants kid to not exist, and not horrible parents to not procreate.

Either way, none will be able to convince another as it's impossible to provide whole life context to one another. Maybe if we had more extended chat in real life we'd be able to come to some conclusion together, but definitely not on a forum with limited time and limited text.

> Child doesn't have enough money

Yes child has the amount of money that parents are able to provide.

> Keep searching for the boogeyman who wants kid to not exist, and not horrible parents to not procreate.

Why do you think that not being able to send a child to school trip with the rest of the class makes one a "horrible parent"? Not providing child with a sibling is a significantly worse thing.

> I love how all of your message is focused on kid, like parents are just passive observers in all of this.

Parents are trying to give their kid as good a life as possible, and having several siblings gives more opportunities in life and better life overall, than being a single child and having more toys, trips, etc.

Median compared to which group neighbourhood/city/world?

What you are saying is basically equivalent to selling one child in order to buy a toy like the neighbour has for another.

Median of their environment. All kids should have equal opportunities.

So the bottom half shouldn't have children? And who appointed you an authority on deciding who should be conceived and who should not?

But also this:

> All kids should have equal opportunities.

That's your rationale for your position? Your position does not follow from your rationale. Even if only median-or-above families have children, that won't create equal opportunities. That will just make the children of median families the poorest children, with the fewest opportunities.

So your position doesn't follow, even from your stated moral standard.

(Your stated moral standard is also far from self-evidently correct. But even accepting your standard, your position still doesn't follow. What follows is forced wealth equality.)

    even the poorest people in US and Europe live _unreasonably_ comfortable lives.

This is ridiculous. They do not.

> As a would-be parent, it is your duty to guarantee a comfortable childhood for your child. This means having a reliable and sufficient income stream to provide for a reasonably comfortable life. If you lack that sort of income, it is irresponsible to become a parent.

Unless your family is very well to-do, you likely only have to look back 2-3 generations on yourself (or anyone) to find parents who don't meet that line. Are you saying the vast majority of humanity are irresponsible parents, or do you believe this to be a new standard that must be followed?

> Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children? That seems to be what you are saying.

I am not sure how this is a controversial point? If you cannot properly take care your children, don't have one. It doesn't matter if its poverty, mental health or anything out of your control. Obviously, that is not to say that poverty is their fault but we have better standard of how much suffering a child should suffer.

In what world is this NOT a controversial point?!? Genuinely, I ask: what is the cultural environment in which you exist, such that you can make this argument without at least knowing that other people would find it deeply offensive?

> If you cannot properly take care your children, don't have one.

OK, so poverty prevents a person from "properly" taking care of children? Would you say that poor people able to take care of their children, but only "improperly"?

What, might I ask, is the minimum acceptable level of income that a couple should have before having children? What do they do, those hard-working, upright and moral couples who don't make enough money to meet your standard? Should they live their whole lives childless, and die alone?

Poverty is a variable to properly taking care of a child, that does not mean that the parent means that being poor automatically makes one unfit to have a child, which is what you're conflating, if I understand correctly. If one is poor but can provide the proper nutrition and housing to a child, then great, have them, but if not, then no, I don't believe it is controversial or offensive to say that it would be better for them to not have a child. Child abuse is a big problem for a reason.

> Poverty is a variable to properly taking care of a child, that does not mean that the parent means that being poor automatically makes one unfit to have a child, which is what you're conflating, if I understand correctly.

In fact, the other commenters were conflating these two things, which I wanted to point out. I agree that they should not be conflated.

> If one is poor but can provide the proper nutrition and housing to a child, then great, have them, but if not, then no, I don't believe it is controversial or offensive to say that it would be better for them to not have a child. Child abuse is a big problem for a reason.

The right decision for an individual couple to make is not the same as the right policies and practices for society to implement.

There are people who are unsuitable for having children, but that number is vanishingly small (or at least it should be). Everybody else just needs support, resources, and instruction.

It might be better for a couple that does not have support, resources or knowledge to forgo having children. Whenever that happens, though, it is a tragedy for humanity. The rest of us should find ways to support families that are otherwise lacking, so that having children is the best option for them.

> In fact, the other commenters were conflating these two things, which I wanted to point out. I agree that they should not be conflated.

Yes, my bad. Being poor does not mean that you are automatically immoral for having children. But I clarified further that poverty is one of the variables in that judgment. Let's not pretend that being poor have no bearing on what the children will experience.

> What, might I ask, is the minimum acceptable level of income that a couple should have before having children? What do they do, those hard-working, upright and moral couples who don't make enough money to meet your standard? Should they live their whole lives childless, and die alone?

The whole tone of your message, talking about child as a passive thing that you conceive for the sake of making parents “not alone” already speaks a lot about how much you give a shit about whether A KID would be happy being born into this family.

In which family did you grow up? Pops and moms were happy campers with middle class income?

It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born at all—and then to characterize that argument as somehow being in favor of that child's interest.

My point is that a hard-working, upright and moral couple that wants a child should have one even if they are dirt poor, and shouldn't stop themselves because they don't have money. If the child ends up being unhappy in that environment purely as a result of the lack of money, then that is society's failing—our failing—not a failing of the parents'. We haven't done our duty to help this couple raise a happy family.

> In which family did you grow up? Pops and moms were happy campers with middle class income?

This is a strangely personal comment. Is this argument very personal for you? Is there something about your own life that makes you want to deny life to others?

Of course it is. You didn’t pick that up from the time of my comment?

I think we’re discussing this from different dimensions. You’re talking from some abstract concept of family and society relationship and I’m talking from a real word experience of growing up poor. It sucks, big time. So don’t start rationalizing suffering of millions growing up poor as “we’ve failed them, oh well, back to the drawing board!”

Not everyone growing poor has the same experience. I also grew up much poorer than my peers, plus that was in a war torn country where we didn't even have electricity for several years. And it did not suck at all.

Your mistake is thinking that the goal of life is to minimize suffering. But that is completely wrong, only result that this goal can lead to is complete elimination of life.

The goal of life is maximizing complexity, divercity, and capacity of life.

The amount of suffering i had to experience was completly justified because i had a chance to grow up and improve the lives of others. I happened to be lucky enough to realize that chance, but my parents had no way to know beforehand if i would be successful or not, that's why they were right to try.

> It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born

Someone who didn’t grow up poor will never understand this.

It's the same reason we catch and fix stray cats.

It's better that they not have kittens, than their kittens be born and starve to death.

With people, it takes even longer and more suffering to die of poverty than one first winter.

Sounds almost like some old slogan, "life unworthy of life" was it?

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

There is nothing dehumanizing about saying that any person in significant poverty, regardless of any membership in any demographic sector, should not have kids, because their kids are going to suffer.

I'll go a step further and share my personal belief that no one should have kids.

Children, while traditional, are nevertheless (and this fact seems to be inconvenient to many) optional. Every human has the choice available to them to not have children.

I grew up poor and I don't understand it either.

Children a century ago had a high likelihood of dying before they were 5. Now, that risk is greatly diminished.

At the same time, the standard of living has greatly increased across the board for rich and poor.

I am sorry that you had a bad childhood. Future generations of children, even the poor will have it better.

> I grew up poor and I don't understand it either.

> Children a century ago had a high likelihood of dying before they were 5. Now, that risk is greatly diminished.

I think our misunderstanding of each other comes from having different standards of what's considered good for child and what not.

> I am sorry that you had a bad childhood. Future generations of children, even the poor will have it better.

I never said that I had a bad childhood.

> It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born at all—and then to characterize that argument as somehow being in favor of that child's interest.

> My point is that a hard-working, upright and moral couple that wants a child should have one even if they are dirt poor, and shouldn't stop themselves because they don't have money. If the child ends up being unhappy in that environment purely as a result of the lack of money, then that is society's failing—our failing—not a failing of the parents'. We haven't done our duty to help this couple raise a happy family.

This is such a ridiculous point. Hypothetical children do exists because they will be when its enacted upon. For example, if a couple keep giving birth KNOWING that their children will suffer, are they not responsible for their children suffering?

Sure, it is not their fault that the children suffers. Perhaps because they have bad genes, stuck in a warzone, lives in an awful country, have mental health issues, cannot provide for their children, or whatever. The fact is still that they KNOW this hypothetical children will suffer.

Imagine if we are able to write an executable that will startup a simulation where it will simulate a universe with maximum suffering. I have compiled the program, its right there to be executed. Is it immoral to execute this binary? Yes of course it is. Similarly, if I KNOW that having a child right now, given all the circumstances that I am in, whether its my fault or not, will cause this potential child to suffer, then I am immoral.

The logical reasoning here, is that a poor person needs to become 'not-poor' to be able to have children responsibly.

This greatly trivialises the reality of poverty.

People aren't poor by choice; they're often poor through situations that are beyond their control.

To also suggest they're not allowed to have children because of these factors beyond their control is tantamount to an injustice.

This is like saying people with life threatening congenital defects not being allowed to have children because of factors beyond their control is an injustice.

Nobody's stopping them, but it's still an irresponsible and terrible idea. We know that having children in poverty in the US leads to terrible health and educational outcomes for the children, just like we know that having children if you have extra chromosomes leads to terrible health and educational outcomes for the children.

If you believe that poverty is truly outside of individual control, the situations are analogous.

Life isn't fair, but that doesn't make responsible == irresponsible.

Absolute nonsense.

Extra chromosomes don't come about due to unjust political choices being made on behalf of parts of the electorate.

Poverty is generally outside of the control of _those who suffer it_ largely because money brings power.

Those without money naturally have less.

Consider your views carefully, because at present they're definitely not worth reproducing.

We're not talking about the electorate, we're talking about individual people's decisions to have children.

If you are impoverished (and thus unable to meaningfully effect change in the system that impoverished you) it is irresponsible and bad to have children because the outcomes for those children will be bad.

You may decide that this state of affairs is bad, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still bad today to make an individual choice to have children in poverty.

Only if you believe the only worthwhile thing in life is money.

As someone who grew up in a poor family as an unplanned child I have to agree.

> Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children?

Yes. Not implicitly, explicitly. That’s how I was born and suffered for 20 years until I earned my way out of poorness.

> What do poor people have to do to have kids "responsibly", in your view?

If you can’t give your kid what other parents can (and I’m not talking about obscene gifts, just basic activities such as going to clubs, or attending social places) - you shouldn’t have kids.

You are incorrect.

What if you can give them positive things that money can't buy?

Do all rich kids get the benefit of wisdom, experience, compassion, joy?

I grew up poor, my life is awesome now, so you are wrong in at least one case :)

The assumption that people are irresponsible is too strong. Often all it takes is this: "Mom, if I have a kid will you help me raise it?" - "Of course".

that is not the logical conclusion; all it needs is people above some wealth line to be the ones who have the means and wherewithal to decide against, and it is their perceived cost of guaranteeing a good childhood home being input to the decision, not the minimum cost necessary to maintain a life.

Lots of kids grow up sitting alone with the TV and eating bologna. Lots of parents want tutors and sports equipment and musical instruments, and crucially: free time to spend with their kids.

They also want to minimize the impact of that on their other dreams, and if the impact is too high, they'll at least try to wait.

It’s technically possible to raise kids on almost nothing, but whether or not doing that is a good idea or desirable is another matter.

Certainly having children on a shoestring budget involves a lot more struggle than most care to risk, and if someone is thoughtful enough to hold off on having kids until they feel they’re financially ready they probably want their kids to have a rich childhood.

So more accurately, what’s unaffordable is the ability to eliminate economical risk while providing for children to the desired degree. People don’t want to be one disaster away from being out on the street and/or to be giving their kids a barebones childhood.

I think the attitude is like this because the laptop class and yuppies still don't want to give up their subscription lifestyles to have kids.

Kids are a sacrifice regardless of social class. Even rich people deal with the costs of raising children.

I wrote off the notion of ever having kids in my early 20s in large part because of how expensive it is (and thus what it would mean for my lifestyle.)

The funny thing is that thanks to a somewhat successful career in tech, I could afford them more than the average family in my area can. But that doesn’t matter - I’ve conditioned myself to not want them, and I don’t regret not having them one tiny bit.

Your story is probably very common. The social media narrative (Reddit, Twitter, HN, etc) around children is hilariously detached from reality at times. It’s bizarre as a parent to read 20-something childless people speak so confidently about what it’s like to have children.

I participated in a mentoring program where I worked with younger people entering tech careers. It was mind blowing to hear them talk about children as being impossibly expensive while we had just discussed negotiation of their six-figure offer letter a few days prior. It’s like the reality of having kids got distorted and twisted and exaggerated so much on sites like Reddit that they all lost touch with reality and instead cemented the idea that kids were impossible for them.

If you’ve “conditioned yourself to not want them” then that’s a really weird place to be. That implies that you did maybe want them at some point and overrode that via “conditioning” based on facts that turned out to be untrue (that you couldn’t afford them). If I was in your shoes, I’d be taking a long, hard look at what other life assumptions you’ve been “conditioned” out of from exposure to false narratives and internet exaggerations.

Maybe kids are not for you, but I’ve seen enough very happy parents into even their 40s who started out thinking they never wanted kids until they finally re-evaluated how they arrived at that conclusion and realized it was the result of bad inputs. If you know the key inputs were false, maybe re-run that whole decision process again with a clean slate and some accurate facts. You might be surprised.

I see this a lot too. There’s a huge misconception on what having kids is like.

Lots of tech folks live in low fertility areas where nobody has kids. So strange ideas just persist.

I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm now in my mid-30s and I too have written off having children for a number of reasons:

* Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this.

* I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape.

* Related to the above, I refuse to make my children be witnesses to my inevitable death. I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell. I do not wish this experience upon anyone, and to that end I refuse to have children because to do so means I wish this hellish experience upon them.

* Children as a concept is hypocritical: On the one hand I am responsible for their well-being and that implies I can and will and should have a say in their life; on the other hand they are independent individuals whom I cannot violate, and I refuse to impose my will upon them anyway because that is not my place.

* I find the entire notion of a family far too bothersome for my life. I do not need nor want a spouse whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom I will grow to resent. I do not need nor want children whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom will grow to resent me. I do not need nor want familial relations which will all be concentrated bullshit. I do not need nor want any of that noise in my life, I desire peace and tranquility.

> I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell

The life has a way to handle this: children. Not saying you should but just saying that having children makes passing of the parents a bit less hellish. Will not make it easy but children forces us to be in the present and in the local now and contemplate less about about the extended family or past.

Just to clarify: it will be extremely immoral and unethical to have children just to alleviate this. And damaging in so many ways. I am just presenting a side effect here.

> Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this.

I’m a parent, I disagree. I might have thought in my 20s that having kids is expensive, but in my 30s I make so much money that is not an issue. Buying a house, that is expensive :)

> I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape.

Have you spoken to a therapist recently? You might be depressed. From my point of view, life is beautiful and challenges make it interesting.

> From my point of view, life is beautiful and challenges make it interesting

This is a very deep and philosophical question, I think its perfectly reasonable for people who are not depressed to still come to the conclusion that they don't want to create more life since life itself is too difficult. Even in a best case scenario of being born to a rich, loving family in some prosperous democracy you still have to deal with yours and everyone you loves mortality.

I think there's another interesting issue that may be going on - people postpone having kids more and more, many start seriously considering it in their late 30s. That's an age where most people also start feeling the squeeze of midlife - ill parents you need to take care of, sometimes your own health starting to decline a bit etc. It's not surprising some people give up on kids.

You are rich enough that raising a child is no longer a major expense for you, is this not the exception that proves the parent commenter's rule, then? Most are not so lucky as you.

There are a large number of people who make significantly less than SWE here that have and raise children.

Rural Appalachia is one example.

Appalachia is much cheaper than SF, so one can make less and still have a good time raising their kids. It's not about absolute income, it's about purchasing power parity between areas of a country or world.

Poor people have more children, just fyi

Implying that someone is depressed and need to see therapist because their life vision differs from your is extremely ignorant and offensive. Especially when original point isn’t controversial at all.

They didn’t suggest therapy because of the point about not wanting kids. They suggested therapy because of the point about life being nothing but challenge and hardship, misery, etc. I think it’s not controversial to point out that therapy might help with that.

It would be, but they didn't.

I assume this was the reference point for that comment:

> life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape.

I've spoken to therapists nearly my entire life (another expense you may be on the hook for as a parent, like my parents were), and no therapy or drug has ever been able to allow me to find any meaning in life. It's not a struggle I have any interest in passing down to another.

Which gets at a question I often have for those in these threads - what would you do if you had a child who was so depressed that they're unable to live independently?

Maybe there is no meaning in it, at least in some people’s worldview.

Perhaps the optimal path for people who feel that way is to enjoy the good parts until it comes to an end?

Yes, it's quite apparent in peoples' art - from Voltaire's "Candide" to Rick and Morty, my favorite example would be when Morty says, "Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV".

When Douglas Adams said that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is "42", it was pretty obvious that he was saying that the entire question is just absurd.

Enjoying what time is left is indeed my goal, and perhaps what a stoic or existentialist would tell you as well. It has not been easy though.

I’m an outlier here probably, I’d support the child in doing almost whatever they wanted to do, including euthanasia.

Thank you for this response. Outlier though it may surely well be, I find it lovely in a way though I doubt any parent (and indeed most humans) would actually be able to follow through with the extreme example given.

Euthanasia for someone temporarily depressed is probably not something humanity can handle without abuse.

It’s like a ‘guns for all’ policy.

Yeah both are stupid.

Euthanasia should be allowed only after 18-36 months of therapy sessions.

Guns should be allowed for all that aren't criminals and/or mentally ill.

> hellscape

If you come from or live in a western country, you have no idea how good your life is.

And how you have to make up problems because real problems have been done away by your society.

Real poor people in Asia and Africa would give anything to be poor people where you live.

Ah, the classic "there are starving children in Africa so your feelings and perceptions are invalid."

Subjective wellbeing means that everyone thinks they need 10% more to be happy.

you replied to the wrong comment LOL

> I’m a parent, I disagree. I might have thought in my 20s that having kids is expensive, but in my 30s I make so much money that is not an issue. Buying a house, that is expensive :)

You're contradicting yourself. I'm a dad of two. Kids are extremely expensive and the largest expense is needing a large enough house in an area with good schools (UK here). That alone adds extra hundreds of thousands to your cost of living.

No, it’s orthogonal.

My 2 cousins grew up in a one-bedroom flat of 50m2.

On the other hand, I would have wanted a larger flat / house even if I remained childless and/or single.

Schooling in the UK is indeed a fuckup of epic proportions that I luckily don’t need to get involved with, but homeschooling is an option, right? The alternatives are getting better and better, with improved technology etc.

To sum up, you don't have kids because you want to save them from... life.

Uhh are you okay?

Don’t worry, some of us are burdened by this weird feeling called “empathy”. You don’t.

Perfectly fine and happy as I can be, thanks for the concern.

Your ability to think you understand exactly how bad the future will turn out is working against you and helping you have a depressing outlook.

I do not care about the future, I am talking about the here and now and I refuse to foist this upon a hypothetical child of mine.

My goal is to lead a peaceful, tranquil life and when the time comes for my passing to leave as little as possible behind in my wake. Ideally I hope to not suddenly die in a freak incident, so I can relinquish or otherwise destroy my personal possessions prior to my passing.

If nobody notices I ever existed after I pass, I am satisfied.

So, one is conditioned to “not have kid”, but having them is perfectly natural and there is absolutely no conditioning in wanting them?

When my partner in a childless relationship gets asked “but why?” when she says she doesn’t want children, her answer is this: “would you have asked the same question, had I said I want them?”

No, they would not have asked that question, because literally 100% of their ancestors for millions of generations had children (or otherwise reproduced). That’s the default option.

Which reinforces my point. Reddit, an irrelevant blip in history is a stronger conditioning than millennia of “default option”?

The default option worked not by conscious thought but by desire for sex. Now we have found a way to decouple that from procreation, so people have to actually think, and they often end up choosing a path that leads to dead end.

For millions of generations there were millions of generations that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate. And also your assumption that all those millions of generations that you’ve mentioned procreated willingly is false.

> ...that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate

and then they didn't survive for the next generation. If that is okay with a society, nature will simply replace that society with another one.

Not necessarily. Civilization is built on knowledge of people who procreated and who didn't.

Because the fatal flaw of a lot of advanced societies is elevating individualism. You are ultimately just a part of the human species and we evolved naturally to produce babies and raise them (i.e. desire for sex). We were also a lot more tribal and it was easier to raise kids with a village.

Combination of the latest trends of the past few decades (contraception, individualism, nuclear families) goes against the natural design for the sustenance of our species. Nature doesn't have morals and is pretty ruthless, so if a sub-species doesn't want to have kids, it will cease to exist and will be replaced by the one who values kids.

South Korea will be an interesting example to watch - whether they reverse their course and start valuing kids as a society, or they might get replaced by immigrants or are taken over by the neighboring countries. Nothing good or bad inherently with either option because life is meaningless anyway.

SK disappears in a poof of logic and NK just waltzes south.

This is certainly true on a global and evolutionary scale. Yet, we, as individuals don't work on a global and evolutionary scale, but an individual one, at least in our society. Therefore I'm perfectly fine not having kids, because I have absolutely no intention to accept and feel the societal burden on my unprivileged shoulders.

Having children is a horrible deal for women though. Given the effect on their careers, health, and social life, I can understand why fewer would willingly choose to have them. This explains why whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down.

no problem, immigration's gonna fix it

Women who've had kids live longer & have fewer diseases btw. Breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer. It's not such a bad deal actually.

> Having children is a horrible deal for women though

Women in every rich country have fewer children than they desire:

https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility...

This is evidence in support of it being a bad deal.

If it was a good deal, women would have more children than they want because the economics were right

Yes and no. Maybe I should have quoted the following part of the parent's comment:

> whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down.

Which is clearly falsified by the link I posted.

I certainly agree with you that the economics of raising children is not right in western countries, but this still doesn't deter women from wanting more children than they're having, so I don't think it's at all fair to say that fewer are willingly choosing to have them.

I guess that depends on that womans interests. Many women (and men, but less) are simply not career driven. Many stay at home parents build wonderful social lives around other parents at playgroups, schools etc and see their friends more than their working comparatives. Your health is also in theory a lot easier to stay on top of without a job - not so much with small children, but definitely with double digits.

What’s so great about a career? I grew up loving programming. My career had disabused me of that long since. I am indeed very lucky and grateful that my income can support my entire family such that my wife could take a break from her career (in social services, a hell much worse than my own career) to raise our child full time. I would trade the frustrations of tech to be a stay at home dad in a heartbeat.

A career supporting yourself is also mostly just a way to increase profits for capital owners, what is fulfilling about that?

Effect on health? Social life? Career?

That doesn't make a lot of sense. The impact on health is transitory and most women recover just fine after birth. Social life can actually get better when it expands to other parents. Career? I guess if your goal is to grasp the golden ring that's true.

But my god, surely our lives have more meaning than living as long as possible, maintaining the social life we had in our 20's as long as possible, and dedicating our lives to our careers.

Yikes, I'm not sure how accomplished and how satisfied with my life I'd be if I got to my 90's and successfully fulfilled those goals. I'd feel rather empty to me honest.

But this opinion seems very common on social media. It's like there is no worthy goal in life beyond optimizing health, eating at trendy restaurants and becoming CEO.

Burdening someone with existence without their consent just to give my life meaning seems a bit selfish to me. Everyone's calculus of how likely their future kids' lives are likely to be comfortable, rich, and fulfilling is obviously different, but to me, it seems like an iffy time to assume that the world will continue getting better indefinitely.

Life is more than just being comfortable and rich.

The world has always “been ending”. Look back at any period in the last couple of centuries and you’ll find doomsayers. They were wrong.

But hey maybe the world will get worse overall, but it’s not like humans haven’t suffered through worse. And just because times are tough it doesn’t mean you can’t have a fulfilling life with human connections being a key part to that fulfillment.

Dont have kids if you don’t want to but I’m not going to put my life on hold because maybe the world will get crappy.

It's not my life though, is it? That's already a done deal, and I wasn't given a choice. The question is whether I should bring forth a new one.

Sure it's not your life, but just because you didn't find fulfillment, or riches, or happiness, doesn't mean your children won't.

Like I said, don't have kids if you don't want to. Nobody should.

But the idea the world is doomed and your offspring are destine for a life of misery isn't really based on reality.

Your point about questioning our own assumptions (especially those we may have made early in life) is very fair and reasonable advice.

The way I look at it though, the desire to have children comes from societal and self conditioning too. For the majority of people, building a nuclear family is what they see all around them, and few ever really question whether or not their desire comes from the fact that it seems like the default and it would be too hard to go against the grain.

I don’t have the drive to have children. Maybe I would have if I saw it as more of a possibility earlier on in life, but I think we underestimate how much of that drive actually originates from outside forces for many people.

I never wanted kids and then in my late 30s (currently 51M) I really started feeling deeply that something was missing in my life. I had close friends, made good money, had a lot of freedom, and yet still suddenly felt a deep desire and almost a loneliness without them.

My father had me when he was 50 so I didn’t feel like I was too old. Ended up having 3 and wouldn’t trade them for anything. For all the hardship there is such an overwhelming joy that also comes with children that I’ve never found anywhere else.

Agreed. I wasn't sure if having kids was a right decision given all other entertainment we could have had and hobbies I could have continued to pursue. My partner was absolutely sure about having kids. Looking back now, kids are the best thing to have happened to me without any doubt.

These outside forces have been explored: https://iep.utm.edu/girard/

How much of "conditioned not to want them" is from overly effective anti-teen pregnancy campaigns? Scare the kids straight that children are a one-way trip to the poorhouse so they keep it in their pants at prom. A decade later, some of them who easily could afford a family choose not to raise one because the lesson stuck.

It’s incredibly effective. People leave that thinking most children cry non stop at completely random intervals, as if our millennia of evolution hasn’t informed us how to do this simple task.

I think in general we should try to re-assess decision taken early in life. Some of them work some not. I say this from a personal perspective where it took me years to undo some decisions I took early and they were so hard established that it was a long process to unlearn/undo them.

I quite like the idea that when it is about vision or meaning of life we should carefully make the learning or setting in stone kind of process harder. I think when young we are very biased to see the world in some way as we are biased to see it in some other way at 50.

Not trying to convince you to revisit specifically the decision about children. Just sharing my own learning

> I’ve conditioned myself to not want them

A lot of young people have done exactly that because a childless lifestyle seems much more appealing. Particularly for women who have to sacrifice their careers as well.

Finland is a good place to move to fix most of these, if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs.

And yet, it seems like the slowdown is hitting us as hard as anyone... so I don't think it's actually that.

I think a big part of this is a cultural shift to no longer being culturally obligated to marry young and start a family.

Anf brainwashing that everyone should have a career while in reality most people end up simply with jobs and not careers. Believing lies has a societal cost.

Honestly, I think it's simply that people have much more interesting lives these days. Babies and entertainment are substitute goods.

Interesting? Give me some examples. This problem goes beyond the east vs west. This is about humans failing to learn from the past. Add modernity and progress|regress.

Sports, science, literature, movies, skydiving, games, online games, learning, I can go on forever about different modern activities.

Most of this was around before the modern era in some form or fashion.

There is nothing new under the sun.

If you weren’t born rich, like Newton or Darwin, you were unlikely to be able to afford to learn and do science. Forget about being able to travel to the other side of the world without a huge risk of dying of malaria, dysentery or any of the other myriad diseases whose risks weren’t yet mitigated. Most people also couldn’t afford to travel even to countries nearby. Games: obviously no video games, but personally I wouldn’t miss them. ;) Other games, like poker, chess, mahjongg: true, they were there. Skydiving: nope. Learning: much more limited. E.g. there was so little communication between Asia and Europe that for most Europeans you’d need to move to Asia for months or more to even find a teacher. Beside languages, education in general didn’t use to be available to as large a percentage of society as now. Illiteracy was the common case. According to [1], in 1701 in UK 54% of population was literate, in Western Europe: 31%.

[1]: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-lite...>

One of my grand mothers was a teacher and yet she bore 9 children. She lived through WW2 in the Asia/Pacific. All her children got were engineers, couple of doctors and a successful entrepreneur. What's more interesting than that? The truth is that inequality, modernity and self-love is going push us into a demographic collapse. Being a wirehead/hobbyist is definitely less fulfilling and less noble.

Pumping out children is ... noble? How?

They are raising those who will be changing your diapers.

I feel this can be easily dramatized in either direction

Imagine sitting down for 9 hours typing, then going home and scrolling through porn and getting high and thinking that's much more interesting than conquering a village, sailing the coast of a new continent, having sex with a beautiful virgin, and teaching your sons to reach even further into greatness.

Or on the other hand, the hard reality redpill that your life in the past would be manual labor on a farm as a peasant, making a lord rich.

I still lean towards a romantic past - working hard with your village friends, then going to the pub with them, and coming home and making babies with your wife, in a home you own, with a tended garden and many children, sounds better than writing Ansible playbooks and jacking off to pornhub. And this is the life of a loser in the past, compared to a "winner" of the present.

Maybe it's anomie, people don't have children when they don't believe in their civilization

The losers in the past died of diarrhea aged three.

If you made it as far as wife and kids, you were a winner.

If wife made it as far as the third kid without dying of sepsis, she was an ultra winner.

By that standard, most people conceived in the present don't even survive the womb

Well, ditto the past - not only were diet and other conditions harsher, the Church was happy to prescribe, mix, prepare and administer abortifacients.

eg: https://daily.jstor.org/abortion-remedies-medieval-catholic-...

and that's Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Abbess and founder of two monasteries handing out the Ye Olde abortion pills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM

This is not true. The medicine was for miscarriages (it was referred as “spontaneous abortion”).

It's explained in the article that you linked. Some women did take the medicine to induce an abortion, but they did not do that with Hildegard's aid or assent.

There is a helpful discussion around this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/q88veb/is_this...

Read it how you wish, Hildegard is clearly ambiguous on the application and specifically includes the “she aborts an infant which is a danger to her body” which certainly goes much further than, say, Texas.

I don't know why you're forwarding a false dichotomy here, there's a lot more than doomscrolling and writing Ansible playbooks if you don't have children, and there's a lot more work to having children than tending an idyllic garden. And it's not as if you won't be up at 9 pm fixing production issues and rewriting Ansible playbooks even with children. In other words, one does not replace the other.

> and coming home and making babies with your wife

You mean raising lord’s kid?

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

> I still lean towards a romantic past - working hard with your village friends, then going to the pub with them, and coming home and making babies with your wife, in a home you own, with a tended garden and many children, sounds better than writing Ansible playbooks and jacking off to pornhub. And this is the life of a loser in the past, compared to a "winner" of the present.

Why are so focused on porn? Modern life is amazingly diverse with activities: jumping with parachute, sports, dancing, games, science clubs, I could go in forever. Maybe instead of lamenting try to actually do something except for jerking off and writing ansible for 9 hours?

> You mean raising lord’s kid?

From the link to wikipedia you sourced:

> A majority of historians[citation needed] have concluded that the idea is a myth and that all references to it are from later periods.

> [citation needed]

I'm not saying it didn't happen. I am saying there is not really that much evidence.

Also from the wikipedia link you sourced:

> Scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries gave the historical basis of the "right of first night" a good deal of attention.[clarification needed][37] Historians David M. Walker and Hector McKechnie wrote that the right might have existed in medieval Europe,[7][53] but other historians[who?] have concluded that it is a myth, and that all references to it are from later periods.[54][8] Over time, the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Larousse encyclopedias dramatically changed their opinion on the topic, moving from acceptance to rejection of the historical veracity of the idea.[55] French writer Louis Veuillot wrote a book in 1854 disputing its existence.[56] After an exhaustive historical study, German jurist Karl Schmidt concluded in 1881 that it was a scholarly misconception.[37] After Schmidt, many of those who believed in the existence of the custom based their opinions on anthropological studies of tribal societies, though according to W. D. Howarth, this was a misguided argument because of the disparity between the tribal societies and medieval European society.[57]

Well, that's why I avoid dramatization. Anyone can daydream - it takes discipline to think on the margin.

What do I have? What do I want? How can I beat use the former, to achieve the latter? Those are the questions of practical importance.

OK, as someone who spent quite a long time living in a village with several pubs, let's dig into this!

If you want to be able to go to a pub, you have to allow for one to be built within walking distance. The absolute worst thing about American suburbs is that they have decided to enforce puritanical idiocy by not interspersing pubs with houses, which mean the DUI rates are ridiculous. And the places in the US where this is not the case are the most expensive, in a turn that surprises no-one.

As for Ansible, I think I'd rather do the farm labour, to be frank.

Evolution will weed that culture out in a few generations.

The future belongs to Mormons and Muslims.

And real poor people, not middle class westerners complaining about housing and student loans.

Poor people in Asia and Africa still have large families.

So did the Irish, until it wasn't necessary to have 9 kids for enough of them to make it through childhood to take over the family farm.

Yeah, much of the big family thing is a numbers game. You get 7 kids to be sure to have 2-3 surviving ones.

Birth rate always drop in times of riding political instability and decreasing quality of life.

>Finland is a good place to move to fix most of these, if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs. And yet, it seems like the slowdown is hitting us as hard as anyone... so I don't think it's actually that.

I think you hit the nail on its head so to speak. Here in Poland the parenting/childcare situation is probably worse than Finland from what I hear, but much better than it used to be. The change in benefits for example eliminated child poverty, but had zero effect on population growth(which was one of its selling points).

I think unless we manage to invent "artificial womb" in long term (as humanity) we are going to have huge problems. Not because there will be less of us. No, but because the huge majority will be very old. This will blow up our heathcare, economy etc. Who will care for all these old people? Robots?

This is a very serious problem that will hit us in next ~30 years. Imagine if a single person at work supports 5 pensioners? Someone can say, what do you mean, these pensioners are living off investment income on the decades of their contributions. But this is not exactly right. For them to consume someone has to produce. If there is shortage of workforce there will be shortage of goods, the prices will skyrocket, the workers wages will adjust, but pensioners will be left with nothing or will be helped by the state. Also imagine what impact on national security this will have? Religious sects that promote having large families will thrive, imagine what that will do to our societies.

I propose in medium term this is a far bigger problem than climate change.

What is the solution then? Immigration. (the legal kind). We (the West) have to establish systems that promote migrant integration. For this we absolutely have to give up the insanity of "cultural relativism". No, cultures that cherish freedom of the individual and ones that treat women as property are not equivalent. Without the strong backbone of acceptance our culture is superior and certain things are non-negotiable (like individual liberties, freedom of religion, expression, identity) this will not work. But if we can manage to implement this without sliding into extremes people from other places will want to come, live here, work and raise their children. This will solve our (the West) population growth problem in the short to medium term. In the long term? Only robots and artifical wombs.

> Religious sects that promote having large families will thrive, imagine what that will do to our societies. > What is the solution then? Immigration.

I can understand holding either of those views, but not both at the same time. Why do you expect immigrants from a culture that produces a surplus of people (and pressure to immigrate) to have a lesser/better effect on your culture than the offspring of native religious "sects"?

If you cut out the next sentence, yes it looks contradictory. Consider I wrote the below immediately after:

>(the legal kind). We (the West) have to establish systems that promote migrant integration.

Immigration is not a single problem to be for or against. It's a complex problem that can help us resolve our population growth problems or it can destroy our societies(there are examples of both).

The key differences between the "good" immigration and the "bad" immigration are: the good is usually, but not always legal and the bad is usually but not always illegal.

Other things that matter a lot are the purpose why people immigrate(escaping an actual war going to closest safe place, trying to better one's economic situation by gaining a skill that allows one to work in a more developed economy or going with an intent of gaming the benefit system and living off that), the desire to integrate once the immigrants gets there and the actions the host state does to encourage that (example of bad: put immigrants all in social housing together creating no incentive to learn the host country's language etc, example of good: distribute migrants evenly across the entire country requesting each local gov to provide few units of social housing that are not right next to each other),and finally one of the major ones :the ease of gaming the benefit system. I personally have met people that had their children registered for benefits in 3 countries and the entire family living off that (Germany, Denmark and Netherlands I believe.). I heard in Germany an unemployed immigrant gets more in benefits that he (because it is a he 99% of time) could hope to earn in any unskilled job. This doesn't promote integration and asimilation. It promotes people who go to work being called suckers by their peers.

So yes, there is good immigration (all the people that immigrate legally, or are fleeing a genuine war next door) and there is the bad (all the desperate people that were sold a dream of a life without having to work by living off benefits, then they pay people's smugglers and if they manage to survive the trip they realise this life is not going to be as good as they thought).

So yes, I propose we increase legal, skill based immigration, we encourage integration and assimilation a lot more, and we have expulsion as a penalty for crime. Furthermore, we actually protect our borders, and we enforce the border enforcement by the countries on route, so the illegal immigration goes down to a manageable level. And where people in source countries are really suffering we help these countries over there.

I only glanced over the problem. The ne would have to write a book on the subject to properly cover it. However, seeing first hand examples of good and bad immigration in many countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Poland I believe calling all immigration bad is equally silly as calling it all good.

> there is good immigration (all the people that immigrate legally, or are fleeing a genuine war next door) and there is the bad (all the desperate people that were sold a dream of a life without having to work by living off benefits,

I propose instead: deporting citizens who were sold a dream of a life without having to work by living off benefits?

In this awful world you want to live in, why should people born in one place get to screw me over while people born in other don't? There's nothing special about Greg from down the street, let's throw him down a well to drown if he's not benefiting me

>In this awful world you want to live in, why should people born in one place get to screw me over while people born in other don't? There's nothing special about Greg from down the street, let's throw him down a well to drown if he's not benefiting me

I'm not quite sure why you equate deporting someone who crossed the border illegally, because he thought he can live there without having to work, with "throwing Greg from down the street into a well"? We already have systems in place where people can demonstrate that if they are indeed in danger of loosing their life they will be granted asylum.

You're confusing people that are genuinely in danger (escaping war or persecution) with people that just want to better their economic situation illegally.

>> If there is shortage of workforce there will be shortage of goods

Are we sure about this because a shortage of workforce leading to a shortage of services makes sense but the same doesn’t hold for goods I don’t think?

E.g. I don’t really see myself going to a robot physiotherapist for example. I can’t see how productivity improvements (capital investment in automation for example) can universally improve service production - there are some cases for sure but plenty of gaps.

On the goods side, i don’t care if my TV was made by a robot rather than a craftsperson. As i understand it, the energy and labour required to produce comparable goods today is less than yesterday.

As i understand it, services have gotten relatively more expensive over time as goods have done the opposite. These costs I’m led to believe can be seen as a proxy for labour costs since labour is often the most expensive part and as production volume increases the cost to produce a good tends towards the cost of its material inputs.

Finland, like all developed countries over the last decade+ (Canada, Australia, Netherlands, UK, France, Sweden, etc) also has a big housing affordability problem.

Yes, supply is an issue in all these places (due to mass internal migration to the biggest metros). But also a decade of low interest rates combined with inflationary guarantees/bonuses for first time home owners (esp. in Finland) also has a lot to do with it.

When you make it so everybody can get a loan and cap the interest rate artificially low for them, all you’ve done is inefficiently create inflation.

The developed world elite all attend the same conferences, so we all make the same stupid policy mistakes together.

Maybe in Helsinki. Try any of the thousand other little towns around here, or even the other major cities (Jyväskylä is very underrated imo) and it's a totally different story.

I don't disagree with your claim that last generation's housing policies have caused serious problems, but the scale of what I've seen so far in Finland is nothing like what it is in the United States.

The fact that when you inherit property from a deceased relative, you're also hit with a 15% inheritance tax that year, to be paid in cash, helps. Suddenly holding onto that $700,000 Helsinki condo for the kiddos starts to look like it might do more harm than good.

https://www.suomi.fi/guides/death-of-a-close-family-member/p...

Ultimately I hold out hope that Finland will continue down its path of very common remote work, allowing even mid-career professionals to live wherever they want in this beautiful country. We're all in this together.

> the scale of what I've seen so far in Finland is nothing like what it is in the United States

This is because US housing was already insanely cheap by comparison globally. Just as you say housing is cheap outside Helsinki...outside NYC/SF/LA, housing in the United States is even cheaper.

Even today, the average US house is 40% cheaper than the average Finnish house. [1] And US incomes are on average 25% higher. AND taxes are 15% lower on average in the US.

Meaning the price-to-net income ratio is almost 2X for Finnish real estate vs. US real estate.

[1] As of 2023, average price per sq meter in Finland is 2800 USD. Average price per sq meter in the US is 1800 USD.

Huh. Now those are interesting numbers.

My memory tells me that's not what it felt like when I lived in the US. by your stats I'd have expected my US rent to have eaten closer to 15% than 30% of my take home pay, like it does here, at least if the rents were a competitive enough market to track closely with mortgages. But that's not what I remember ever happening, nor did I spend most of my life in major metros -- my adult working life was almost entirely in Madison, WI, which is about the size of my current Tampere. Rent ate up about 30% of my take home in both places. The apartment I currently rent is bigger than the apartment I rented back there as well, although it is a little older.

I'd expect to have felt the pinch of such a vast price to net income ratio difference in my rent, at least a little bit. So... why haven't I? I have about as apples-to-apples a comparison as it is reasonable to make, right down to them both being heavy student towns.

Finland may feel ok right now, but Finland seems like its going downhill pretty fast. Tax payers are declining. Having kids is seeing more PITA as people want to be young forever, or people are afraid of becoming single fathers/mothers, and the country doesnt support child families enough. The numbers dont look very good. Many of the nordic wellbeing country pillar stones come from high taxes, and once that money stops, the pillar stones have to be cut one by one. Not to add, finland has problem with employment, more than the neighbour countries.

Hm ... Is it actually going downhill, or is it merely improving slower than it otherwise could? The evidence of my senses seems to contradict the first claim.

I was thinking about this recently, and I think the primary issue is capitalism. In particular, how it's completely taken over society and how we view worth and value.

Capitalism doesn't care about families. The only thing capitalism cares about is consumption. So it doesn't really matter if you have 10 kids or no kids, as long as you're consuming, the system is happy. This is of course great if you're the kind of person who never wanted kids to begin with.

The problem however is that Capitalism is short-sighted. It doesn't care about future consumption, just consumption right now in the moment. So inevitably capitalism face issues sustaining itself when there are less people around in the future to consume, as well as sustain all existing debts.

Capitalism wants not just consumption but increasing consumption. In that vein, a decreasing or stagnating population is bad for capitalism. Capitalism wants the pie to keep getting bigger.

Look at countries where population growth is negative. The economies have stagnated.

Children are essential to capitalism.

Even if granting you are correct in your identification of the problem, you offer no explanation of how an alternative system would work any differently.

I guess feudalism would increase fertility given that feudal lords need more serfs to tend their land.

I don't think there is a viable alternate system. If you have a look at past history, societies and ideas and values come and go. They rise and then they collapse. This is just the way it is.

With that said if I had to propose an idea, I would provide money to people to have children. Have the state subsidise it. Provide stay at home mums with a decent income. Fundamentally however, that will create all sorts of issues, because it doesn't change the fact that money still controls society.

Fundamentally, I think the issue is that society no longer has a set of values to propel it forward. In the past, I think values were an extension of nation (and whatever culture that entailed). Now, that value is money. Which is creating all the distortions we're seeing today.

I would argue that corporations in capitalism want and need the immigrants and babies to keep a steady customer base and consumption of their products.

Housing is artificially expensive: zoning limits the construction of denser housing thus leading to a supply shortage and high prices. Most of America is under-built and the housing problem would go away if American cities were upzoned to a gentle six-story, mixed-use density.

Your points about how we must do better to make having kids less financially risky are excellent however. Better parental leave and tax incentives would help.

Yes, but.

If you’re looking for an excuse to not have a kid, you’ll find one. There’s a cultural element too.

Yes, sure.

I'm not sure I want to give up my landhouse for a six-story building in which I share a place with hundreds... just because of "having children".

just be glad your parents chose to err on the side of life

Honestly, why?

Is this some kind of pyramid scheme?

exactly :)

Yes social programs are pyramid schemes and babies and immigrants are the new money in that scheme.

population growth was always been a factor in faction power.

debatable if that has changed

Actually living in a building with families is way more pleasant than living with student neighbours. Those are almost always a nuisance.

Don’t forget, that having kids is really hard. They cost time, money and require support from living environment. There must be kindergartens with sane opening times, not until 2 PM. There must be supportive employers allowing home office on 2-3 days. Especially when kids are sick. Spoiler alert: before school kids are sick at least once a month. Housing is a real problem, but one can have kids in cheaper area too. There is not need to live in super expensive big city center.

Having no kids is simple very easy life without any bigger problems.

This really is the crux of the issue, I've found. There is, at least for me and many others, simply no tangible, concrete reason to have kids, beyond the nebulous sense of pride and accomplishment, which is not necessarily always the case (postpartum depression or the lack of people who openly talk about regretting having kids as that's not socially acceptable).

no other reason to have kids? we're biologically programmed to have kids. i don't have kids myself, but I'm shocked at how intellectual you're coloring is of the situation.

Procreating is our only purpose, as a life form.

For many species, having offspring is a no-op. The Luna moth literally has no mouth (and I'm not sure if it must scream, either), so when it procreates, it creates yet more offspring that also have no mouths. The moth does not do anything while it exists beyond procreating, as there is nothing it can do; in other words, it existing is simply a no-op, in the computer science sense.

Therefore, even if procreating is our only purpose, we can still ponder what the point of doing so actually is. Since we are intellectual beings, we can decide whether it's a logical decision or not, so that we don't end up no-ops either. I've seen friends and family members where kids are born to teen parents, who then have kids as teens, who then have kids as teens, and so on. Those are the equivalent of the moths, those teens have not had the chance to grow and achieve more, they were simply procreating to procreate, and they could not get out of poverty as their entire life was only dedicated to sustenance. Personally, their lives were very sad to me.

Finally, do not fall for the fallacy of appealing to nature, as just because something is natural does not mean it is moral. Many animals will forcefully mate with one another or eat their prey alive, that does not mean that humans must do the same. So too for procreation.

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

Good feedback! my reply is mainly calling out your "pride and accomplishment" claim as the only other reason to have kids.

I agree that there are plenty of reasons to not have kids. and also that plenty of people probably shouldn't have kids from a moral calculus; though importantly it's not our calculus to dictate.

In any case i still say that having kids for the sake of humanity is a Just reason to have kids. Problems and all. Humanity is basically a huge injection of problems and chaos. What else are we going to do.

Not everyone is as primitive.

    the lack of people who openly talk about regretting having kids as that's not socially acceptable

I am always surprised when I see people post about the regret of having children. You are right: It is pretty rare.

> There is, at least for me and many others, simply no tangible, concrete reason to have kids, beyond the nebulous sense of pride and accomplishment

I used to feel like that... until I had children. It is an experience that can't be understood until you live through it. We can use words to try and describe it, but to a non-parent it will sound like a "nebulous sense of pride and accomplishment" because of how far removed it is from their past experiences. It's like trying to use words to explain music to a person who has never felt it.

Yes, but having a child is not a reversible decision, so having a child just to see what it feels like is something that I would not risk doing, especially if the risk is non-zero.

I used to think like that, too. If you ever have a child, you will understand, like so many of us before.

Again, just because you understood doesn't mean I or others necessarily will. It seems to be just like religious belief, in a way, only the risk is much higher and more concrete than Pascal's Wager.

All I'm saying is that you are not alone. Many of us have had the same doubts and found the experience to be (very) positive.

You won't find answers to this by trying to rationalize it, because you can't know what it's like until you experience it, if you ever do.

You do you, my friend. I could no possibly have less at stake here, one way or another.

Have a nice day.

More concrete yes, but losing Pascal's Wager means hell. I'm pretty happy with the childfree lifestyle, but it's hard to argue there's any chance that I'm evading a fate worse than hell.

The implication I was making is that Pascal's Wager is basically unusable as it assumes the Judo-Christian god whom Pascal was familiar with. There are many other gods that may have different belief systems so choosing one out of potentially infinite deities means that it's not a threat that is worth taking seriously.

In contrast, you cannot put the baby back inside if you don't like it, so to speak, and your earthly concerns are much more affected than some nebulous concept of hell that may not even come to pass should you choose a good god.

Thats a big bet. Hope that you will get to some enlightenment by doing something that is irreversible, life changing and veeeery expensive.

It’s like buying a 1M dollar without seeing it and having someone tell you “you’ll love it when you cross the threshold because I did with my house!”

Not saying it didn’t happen to you or your experience is invalid. But extrapolating your experience to everyone else feels dismissive about the doubts they are expressing.

Fun fact.. when you have children, some of your soul is sucked out of each of you, and given to the child.

The child's soul, whole, grows... whilst your damaged soul whithers. Evidence of this can be seen by the zombie like appearance new parents have, still coping with this horrible loss.

As time passes, you become more accustomed to this loss, and it becomes like Stockholm syndrome. You eventually like it, embrace it, concoct wild fantasies about how great the experience is. It is your own mind defending you from the horror, and more importantly, you wish this same fate upon others.

Don't believe them. Don't trust them! Keep, cherish, protect your soul.

Fun fact, this is not true for most parents.

> But extrapolating your experience to everyone else feels dismissive about the doubts they are expressing.

I am not extrapolating my experience to everyone. I'm pointing out that the vast majority of people who have children find it a positive experience.

Lastly, I'm not dismissing their feelings, I am reassuring them that they are very common indeed.

> the vast majority of people who have children find it a positive experience.

How do you know this?

Talking to other parents. We don't bite.

Post child depression and regret is a thing, not limited to just the moms. Diving into it based on faith that your feelings about it will get better is gambling in a huge way.

> Diving into it based on faith that your feelings about it will get better is gambling in a huge way.

But that is not what I'm saying, is it? I'm saying that having doubts before having kids is very common, and that they dissipate once you actually become a parent.

Having children is an adventure for which you can never be prepared. Every parent takes a leap of faith and does the best they can, regardless of how much or how little confidence they had. That's it.

I would be more concerned about the ability of somebody to raise a child if they didn't feel apprehensive, because that would suggest they underestimate how much effort it is going to take.

Sure. If you just have doubts, I get it. But if your partner doesn’t want it at all, then you need to really not push the issue (and if you really want kids, consider changing partners). The trick is understanding you and your partner well enough to distinguish between doubts and no.

> But if your partner doesn’t want it at all, then you need to really not push the issue

I completely get where you are coming from. I was the partner who didn't want children at all. I didn't want the responsibility, the loss of freedom and the financial burden.

We then had a child and any doubts I could have had dissipated: I now knew with absolute certainty that I did NOT want to raise children. No room for doubt whatsoever. I struggled with anger, depression and grief of my previous lifestyle.

A few years later I'm perfectly satisfied with not one but two kids. We would have a third if we were young enough.

All of this is to say: it is a life-changing experience and no amount of doubt or certainty before the fact can prepare anybody for the reality of it. Thus, people overthink it in my opinion.

Do or do not have kids, but let's not pretend that any of us knows what they are getting into until they are in the middle of it. Your priorities in life and your very own identity changes.

Idk I have a kid and I think that’s a BS line. It’s explainable; saying it’s some mysterious unknowable thing is a cop out.

Did you have a good grasp of what it was going to be like before having children? None of the parents I have met feel that way.

Humans are animals. We are not rational beings divorced from the instincts of all life. When people don't want to reproduce, it is the same as it is with other animals: there is something deeply wrong with the social or natural environment. Things like "housing is too expensive" or "the future is bleak" are rationalizations. You don't want to because our social environment in most of the western world is totally broken. Natural selection will solve the problem in enough time, as societies that lead to these conditions fall apart or die out.

Couldn't put it more simply or succinctly if I tried. The topic is huge, yet the absence of further discussion by others is quite telling. I think natural selection is actually very much alive and well its just not in ways we've traditionally been taught to recognize. One of the stronger signals is that there is probably LESS, pressure to do or to live in any such fashion as there has ever been throughout all of human history. Basically nobody could care less. So in turn, only the already-inclined among us are opting to have children.

> simply no tangible, concrete reason to have kids

That's fine for you but what about society?

A few western societies are below the child replacement rate.

How do these places keep their society and social programs going without growing the tax base with new births?

Are immigrants expected to move in and have their own children to insure the tax base stays stable?

"because society" is probably among the worst reasons to have children.

The society that allows you and me to sit in comfort and post on a message board.

Yes that one. The same one with pyramid scheme social programs.

My main concern is who will pay for pensions and health care when my working generation is old?

Most social programs are insolvent or virtual ponzi schemes where CURRENT workers pay for TODAY'S beneficiaries.

Thus we need immigrants AND native babies at greater the replacement rate to insure the scheme does not stop.

Yes, immigration works well, especially in places like the US that have high rates of integration. Perhaps societies should not have pyramid scheme social programs, just as we didn't back in the day. It's not a necessary condition of a technological society.

Or, it must be possible to support some kind of reasonable family life on less than two full time incomes.*

* This does not mean "exactly one full time income", aka "woman, get in the kitchen". There are many desirable options between "one traditional full time male earner" and "two people working a combined 90 hours of paid employment". Also doesn't necessarily mean all the trappings of an affluent Western lifestyle, big suburban home with two new cars on the drive, foreign vacations every year etc.

We are privileged with my wife. Our combined workload is ~7 days per week, and our two kids are in the kindergarten 4 days per week. I work usually 3 days and my wife 4. This is not possible for most families, but I can highly recommend cutting the total hours if possible.

Cheaper areas mean farther away from good paying jobs in my mind.

Remote sounded good back in 2021, but with the return to office push, it is a struggle to have quality of life today.

I agree. Most people I know who don‘t want to have kids it’s primarily because they don‘t want to give up their lifestyle. Having a child means less money, less free time and less individualism.

Our priorities have changed but some want to be able to have everything without compromise.

That's true, but you can't just dismiss the fact that modern life (primarily the fact that both parents work) makes having children extremely difficult.

It's getting better - especially since the pandemic - but most jobs are not remotely flexible enough to deal with school hours or sick children. Nursery is insanely expensive in most countries. I really think a mortgage style option would make a lot of sense here because it's a ton of money for a short time. Or, just make it free like some countries do (and the Tories pretended to do in the UK).

Life still assumes only one parent will work. Our school regularly schedules meetings and events in the middle of the day at short notice and expects that will be fine.

This is something that child-free people fail to understand. It's not just about priorities and "scheduling time" to be a parent. That would be great but it's a fantasy. Reality is being on-call 24/7 to deal with the dozens of logistical problems that come up. It's not just the number of hours but their distribution across the day, the fact that you've got to coordinate 2 work schedules + n children's calendars, and the fact that parents largely don't have any control over the agenda.

Does this impact parent's earning potential? Absolutely. I cannot find a single day on my calendar where my wife and I had an solid block of 8 hours to focus on work. It just doesn't happen. Thankfully I have flexible work hours otherwise it would be literally impossible. As it stands, it's merely exhausting and unsustainable.

That has always been true in some form or fashion though, what you are describing is not a uniquely modern problem. To me the x-factor that makes child rearing especially challenging is lack of a support network. Mobility has made it routine to live hundreds or thousands of miles from your family in a way that did not happen before fairly recently. For most of us, our network consists only of other couples with young children who are all going through the same thing.

Also, the modern problem of both parents being forced to work. Previously one would stay home. The two income trap is real.

It's not a "trap" if it's the only way to buy a house and avoid falling into the renting "trap" instead...

i think you should look up the phrase, because thats exactly what it refers to. That we need two full time incomes to afford a house is a new thing, and is the "trap" we have built for ourselves.

> because they don‘t want to give up their lifestyle

Almost. They want the same lifestyles that their parents had growing up. I do blame the housing market for this. If you rent for the rest of your life, nothing will stop your rent from increasing and your wages from stagnating, and those two lines will cross at some point. With kids it's sooner. The only security you can have is to own a home to guard against any future price gouging.

I think more correct would be, they want the same lifestyle that they think their parents had growing up.

I know an older couple, same age as my parents, they take their entire family on vacations and have a very nice house. They talk about how when they started out they made their own furniture out of paper mache.

My parents had a similar lifestyle, things were not easy then either.

The house price to average income ratio has become much worse over time in most "developed" economies.

There is a mountain of good enough cheap products now due to global supply chains, but you have to stuff them into a tiny flat/apartment.

Sitting on a papier-mâché chair in a well sized home is by far the better situation.

Like the entitlement that comes with wanting to own the roof over their head?

Many of those I know with kids rent. As I said, matter of priorities.

The OP mentioned some women want careers and that is fine.

But what about women who want families or want both?

What can western societies do to encourage these women to have at least 2 children?

We need taxpayers or these social benefits will be gone in a century or sooner.

House prices in the USA have less impact on the total world population than you might think. Similarly, the number of people living in a situation where having children is a smart financial decision for the future is a lot larger than you might think.

Remember this [1] picture? Related: the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to explode further. Average age there is, according to the google infobox [2], 18.8.

In other words: US-internal policies are not going to move the needle on world population much.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Valeriep...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=average+age+sub+saharan+afri...

The problem of expensive housing in locations where housing construction is somewhere between heavily restricted and entirely prohibited is bad in the US but not limited to the US. Most rich countries have this problem.

The problem is always expensive housing where people want to live. The zoning doesn’t make the housing expensive itself, the desirability of the location does. No one ever complains about zoning in Detroit or Cleveland.

Housing can actually be fairly affordable in Europe. Berlin until about 5 years ago had incredibly affordable housing for such a nice city…then it simply got more popular until that wasn’t the case anymore. Tokyo would have similar problems if its population wasn’t actually shrinking now (as are Nagoya and Osaka), since it’s a nice place to live, and housing isn’t very restricted beyond having to rebuild everything every 30 (SFH) to 50 (apartments) years.

Bad zoning prevents price signals from leading to increased density and thus increased supply in areas of high demand.

San Francisco should look like Hong Kong or Tokyo. If you want a quaint small town move to a quaint small town. World cities are not small towns and trying to contain them to preserve their “character” just leads to affordability crises and homelessness among other problems.

If Detroit suddenly became a hot place to live and it wasn’t upzoned the same problems would start happening there.

Hong Kong is more expensive than San Francisco. Is your claim that Hong Kong zoning prevents affordable housing? It doesn’t get much better across the bay in Shenzhen either (if you are buying rather than renting, as is true with most mainland cities).

My point is that, with few exceptions, housing is always expensive in places that are popular. If you want affordable housing, turn your city into Cleveland, don’t turn it into Hong Kong.

Agree a little bit. But also, it seems like there are many powerful people in San Francisco, people like Nancy Palosi, and they don’t want, the city from becoming Mumbai or Hong Kong or whatever it is you think it should be. You seem to want to limit wealthy people like her from participating in the political in a way that protects their interests. Even if you can somehow prevent individuals from impacting politics, groups like the California Coastal Commission will still pop up to represent nearly identical interests to those of individual landowners. The environment matters to poor folks too.

Yeah, we really need to go out of our way to make sure Nancy Pelosi has a say in our political process.

What if one of the most powerful politicians alive doesn't get to make this particular decision? She'll be so disenfranchised!

> Housing can actually be fairly affordable in Europe. Berlin until about 5 years ago had incredibly affordable housing

You mean to rent?

What about people who want to buy a home, have space, and have generational wealth?

You are unlikely to find that in Berlin or any major western city.

The only places to buy withing reach of the middle class are tens to hundreds of KMs out of these cities.

That’s true. You might as well include all of mainland China in cheap to rent but impossible to buy.

> Berlin until about 5 years ago had incredibly affordable housing for such a nice city

Berlin, and may I add Vienna, are anomalies. Vienna's population peaked in 1910. Berlin's population peaked in 1943. They were both capitals of an empire at their peak time. Then they became less important, and their population decreased. Now they have been in a very unique situation with their new population growth, because they already were designed for a larger population.

You can't generalize from Berlin and Vienna to other, more normal, cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_Vienna.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin#/media/File:Berlin_popu...

Yes. I’ve heard Berlin has been pricing up lately regardless. Maybe they’ve already worked through their historic inventory.

This makes a lot of sense. I think my own city (Glasgow) used to be considerably larger when it was an industrial powerhouse in shipbuilding and textiles and has fairly cheap housing nowadays as a result.

It's been getting a bit more expensive due to Chinese students and also people moving north from England but it's still very affordable compared to most places.

True if you look at the cities, but it misses the bigger picture. There was also a trend of people moving into the surrounding suburbs and smaller towns, and commuting to the inner city. If you look at the metro area, both have actually grown.

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20107/vienna/population

Not sure about Berlin but in the case of Vienna, social housing and legislation (Mietrechtsgesetz) are big factors. 25% of Vienna’s population lives in social housing which in turn regulates the market.

There's an implicit assumption,I think, that new populations will repeat the same mistakes of the old ones

Housing is expensive because speculators use it to get rich.

You will not stop the artificially high cost of housing without addressing that root cause.

Speculators are only able to speculate because at the end of the day there are people that are willing to pay that much. Even if you completely decomodify housing you'll just end up finding new ways to ration it if you don't address the supply issue.

Many Americans have no desire to live in a 6 story hell scapes. The idea is revolting to me personally. IMO Housing issues in America at this time are directly tied to the dominance of the fix and flip industry, corporations holding SFR and Mfr properties, high interest rates, and job inflexibility.

Tax incentives help, but where Americans need federal assistance is in paid time off, college tuition assistance (self and children) , and retirement. I'm not talking about social security when I say retirement. What I mean is there needs to be incentives for companies to do better than just 401ks. Public sectors are still enjoying pensions, perhaps a tax incentive would help, but I do not necessarily have a solution there. Only a very subjective view of the problems from my perspective.

Housing is obscenely expensive everywhere, not just America. I didnt think Hong Kong, Taipei, London, etc, suffer from America’s zoning issues?

Also there is plenty of housing available, just not near the jobs and amenities that young buyers want.

Housing is a non-sequitur. Looking at where children are born across the globe, those places have very high housing prices for the local wages, minimal government safety nets and higher poverty rates.

Main reason seems to be that young people in advanced societies simply don't want children because the alternate childless lifestyle seems very appealing in 20s and 30s, costs of raising kids are privatized while benefits are socialized (welfare programs funded by taxes on the working generation).

Yeah. All the productivity gains in the last 40 years have been going towards the side of capital while workers are left in the side of the road. The absurdly rich become richer while the middle-class shrinks.

But yeah, the problem is that some people want to live in their houses with a backyard, those evil villains that don't see the advantage of living in a pigeon home for further capitalistic enhancement of the lives of fat-cat developers.

Everything that exists deserves to perish. The capitalistic leviathan can never be stopped, neither questioned. What do those small folks in the path of progress think they are?

> if American cities were upzoned to a gentle six-story, mixed-use density

This will not work for as long as we keep building neighborhoods that require the use of cars or make biking/walking unsafe. America also lacks a comprehensive public transportation system.

Housing is expensive because of stupid regulations that prevent new constructions and NIMBY communities with too much power.

Plus people want to live near cities and places they can't afford.

> Can’t complain about less kids

People had nothing after ww2 yet had a lot more kids. We are way richer now in comparison so the cost of kids is really a bad argument to make.

After ww2 lots more women didn't work and so could provide childcare.

The problem today is a 2 full-time salaried income is required to be able to afford a decent standard of living for a family, whereas even as late as the 80s it was feasibly to raise a family on a single median income.

"decent standard of living" has changed a bit since WW2 also.

Granted, it'd be hard on a single median income today, but if you're making two, three times median - in your 20s - it should be doable. And that's everyone on a six figure tech salary, to start off with.

Are you genuinely arguing that people in 2023 are poorer than they were in 1950? This would be astonishing if true wouldn't it? Hasn't GDP tripled or something since then?

I think it's more likely to be expectation inflation. People in 2023 just wouldn't be satisfied to live the life people were satisfied to live in 1950.

A thought experiment could be: - There are people that earn 100kpa and people that earn 50kpa - Both kinds of people think they "need two incomes to live these days" - Obviously the 100kpa people could ditch a whole income and live at the level of the two 50kpa people -- but they wouldn't choose to, they'd rather have the lifestyle of a 200kpa household

Yes. About 4 times poorer. (Scoping to the domain of “buying a house” which is a huge driving factor in having children)

> Median home prices increased 121% nationwide since 1960, but median household income only increased 29%.[0]

[0] https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-hist... (That’s from where I quoted, but there’s plenty of sources. More available upon request)

> Yes. About 4 times poorer.

You don't need to buy a house to be able to live. And no, people are not poorer if you consider all factors. That's a crazy argument to make. No human living in 2023 would want to live with 1950 standards.

> You don’t need to buy a house to be able to live.

Agree.

> No human living in 2023 would want to live by 1950 standards.

Also agree.

But that neither of those things are relevant for the argument.

You don’t need a house to live, but it provides stability, which is a huge part of the decision of having children.

Even in countries that fix such financial issues, people still don't have children. Many people simply don't want to have them, no reason is required.

My theory is we've become sufficiently entertained that we could easily envision never becoming truly bored of our lives. There's a constant flow of social media, games, content to stream, etc. If you feel a void in your life, a lack of purpose, you may choose to invest in a child. But, it's a very expensive hobby which requires a ton of time and dedication. Like all long-term investments, there's no reasonable way to know if your ROI will be above your desired threshold when you made the investment.

I'm in my 40's and when I was born my parents had newspapers, radio and 3 channels on the TV. The channels stopped airing content after midnight. They'd have been bored to death if they didn't have kids.

Indeed, and back before the modern day, people really only had sex as their main enjoyment, which they now don't really need anymore. Of course more kids were conceived in the past versus now, they were bored out of their minds otherwise. Once we get virtual worlds with fully realistic sensory input, I doubt people will really have kids at all anymore.

You're right, but I see the signs are on the walls for a reversal already. If I see how desperate recruiting efforts get _everywhere_, despite a not-yet-recovered economic situation, that's just a first flavor of what's to come demographically.

A new generation can already choose from way too many offers, which will be even more expanding as the larger generation ages out and needs more care.

Continuing the trend, junior educated talent will be in such demand that economically, I see no choice than rising prices for their service. Which will in turn triggering inflation and devaluation of existing assets. Additionally, remote work options (held in place by the shortage for talent) will continue to significantly eat into ever increasing city density, and the population plateau — which in developed countries already is a decline — will empty many apartments as well.

The only effect left is rising inequality through inheritance. Slap a hard 90% inheritance tax on any "set for life" money above 2 million USD to finance the rest of society and you're fine.

Just my 2 cetn.

Subsidized daycare/school or long parental leave is literally always one election away if people think that they are important issues.

At least in democracies (many of the large metro hubs are not in democracies).

So is literally everything else https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/thomas-sowell-on-government... Virtually anything can be made more affordable in isolation, simply by transferring resources to it from elsewhere in the economy, and having most of the costs absorbed by the U. S. Treasury.

The federal government could make a Rolls Royce affordable for every American, but we would not be a richer country as a result. We would in fact be a much poorer country, because of all the vast resources transferred from other economic activities to subsidize an extravagant luxury.

Of course it might be nice to be sitting at the wheel of a Rolls Royce, but we might be sitting there in rags and tatters, and gaunt with hunger, after having squandered enormous amounts of labor, capital, and costly materials that could have been put to better use elsewhere. That doesn’t happen in a market economy because most of us take one look at the price tag on a Rolls Royce and decide that it is time for another Toyota.

The very notion of making things affordable misses the key point of a market economy. An economy exists to make trade-offs, and a market economy makes the terms of those trade-offs plain with price tags representing the relative costs of producing different things. To have politicians arbitrarily change the price tags, so that prices no longer represent the real costs, is to defeat the whole purpose.

Reality doesn’t change when the government changes price tags. Talk about “bringing down health care costs” is not aimed at the costly legal environment in which medical science operates, or other sources of needless medical costs. It is aimed at price control, which hides costs rather than reducing them.

Hidden costs continue to take their toll— and it is often a higher toll than when these costs are freely transmitted through the marketplace.

> Virtually anything can be made more affordable in isolation, simply by transferring resources to it from elsewhere in the economy, and having most of the costs absorbed by the U. S. Treasury.

Maintaining birth rates (unlike buying cars manufactured abroad) would likely have a pretty good return on investment for society as a whole, that's a key aspect. Universal healthcare could produce more healthcare per dollar than private insurance and so on.

> we would not be a richer country as a result.

In the case of Rolls Royces, certainly not. In the case of e.g. subsidized daycare or universal healthcare, it all depends on how "rich" is being measured.

Housing is a function of what buyers can afford. The move from single to dual earning households now necessitates a dual income family. We’d actually be in a better position (childcare wise) if we stuck to only one parent working.

You will soon see smaller advanced economies (<40MM) in population decline give $100K++ incentives to raise kids but it will be too late by then.

Or start taxing the childless a surcharge to live in that society.

Yes, let's fix the problem by compelling people to have kids they don't want instead of creating a world worth bringing kids into. /s

I’m grabbing the popcorn when China starts flexing the social credit system to force people to have kids.

> Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros

This will probably be an unpopular comment, but I think this is true for every generation, and is a simple byproduct of having young people earning comparatively low salaries compared to people who have been working for a decade or two already.

I'm in my 40s now, and while I'd have loved to buy a house in my 20s, I couldn't afford it until my 30s. At the time, I thought it was very unfair that all the housing I wanted was priced just out of reach of the maximum mortgage I could get, but a decade of pay rises later, and I could just afford to get on the property ladder but I had no spare money left over each month, and another decade later my mortgage costs were a relatively small fraction of my income and I have a comfortable lifestyle now.

I think the only difference with the current generation of youngsters is that they are far more vocal about it, whereas my generation just accepted it as part of life and quietly put up with it.

It's pretty much the same that every generation of teenagers believes their parents couldn't possibly understand how unfair life is, until a decade or so later, when they've grown up a bit more and realise that they've become the same as their parents after all.

Median annual salary in the UK in 1999 was £19k. Average house price was £75k; a bit over treble.

Median salary 2022 was £33k. Median house price was £265k; over 8 times the median salary.

Not controlled for interest rates or changes in the tax codes, nor the increases in student loan debts.

There was a massive boom in property prices just after 1999 though, which I'd argue was far more significant to the difference you cite.

Looking at: https://www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/property-statist...

The average price in Q4 1999 was £75k, the average price in Q3 2007 was £184k, the average price in Q3 2022 was £273k (the last two are the peaks), the average price in 2023 has already started to dip. So, in 8 years prices went up 145%, and in the following 15 years prices went up 48%.

I bought in the latter half of that first spike I mentioned, and anecdotally, while I was looking but still unable to afford anything (ultimately, it was only possible when my bank changed their rules and afford 4x salary rather than 3x), prices in the area I was looking rose 50% in the 6 months prior to buying my house. In the years since then, its value has only increased by a little over 50%.

Looking further back, the previous peak was in 1989 at £62k. 10 years earlier in 1979 the average price was £19k, a rise of 226%.

So, this isn't a recent phenomena, what's recent is that people are more vocal in complaining that they can't afford to get on the property ladder. My point is that it's always been tough, but if people who can't afford now keep saving then in a few years they'll find their savings and wage increases will let them catch up with the house price plateau.

I think the only difference we've seen so far is that the last plateau wasn't very flat, and after an initial drop, prices have continued to increase but slower than inflation.

> Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare.

I wish the problem was money. We have been looking for a kindergarten for our daughter (~5 years old) for 2.5 years now in southwestern Germany. At one point we sued the local district as children are legally entitled to a place in kindergarten. We settled out of court and the district now pays us ~300 EUR/month for a nanny who sometimes watches her together with 5 other kids (very unreliable, and the children are all under 3 years old, so hardly suitable playing partners). Winning the case wouldn't have made any difference, there simply aren't enough kindergarten teachers available. In our suburb, there are around 120 children in kindergarten age, and the waiting list has over 50 children on it. She has been on this waiting list since March 2021. She also has no chance of getting a place in a neighboring city / suburb, because local residents are always preferred. We often joke that it was easier to buy a car in East Germany than to get a kindergarten place here. We have pretty much given up at this point, and my wife had to stop working. Ironically, she is a social education worker, so exactly the profession that is in very short supply.

I’m curious, in the US - k-12 educators are not known to be paid well. In many cases they simply can not afford market rate housing in 2023. Assuredly this contributes to the high cost of childcare in the US.

Is the situation similar in Germany? It strikes me that if a teacher can’t afford a reasonable life with their own family, then it’s unlikely the education system is sustainable.

Housing is a substantial part of the problem. We have observed a common pattern: educators apply for a job here, interview goes well, both parties are happy, contract is signed, and after months and months of unsuccessfully searching for an apartment, the educator cancels the contract because the money is not enough to live in a hotel full-time (also, who wants that?). But the problem isn't so much that of affordable apartments our houses, although politicians often frame it that way. There simple aren't enough apartments / houses available, in any price range. We competed with 100s of people for our current apartment. We recently wanted to buy a house and competed with 50 people. Last year, our local government started to actively search, buy or rent apartments which they can rent / sublet exclusively to kindergarten teachers.

> Housing ... daycare ... parental leave..

Looking at this list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer... - none of the top 10 countries seem to have great daycares or comprehensive parental leaves or generous social safety nets.

> women want careers too

Ding ding ding. This seems to be the dominant factor when looking at countries with the lowest fertility.

Diving deeper into the birthrates of "developed" countries, it seems a big chunk of babies are born to immigrants. Germany - 25% [1], USA - 26% of kids under 18 have at least 1 immigrant parent[2]

[1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...

[2] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...

What characteristic are you assigning to the group of "immigrants to the USA" that makes that statistic important?

> women want careers too

An alternate phrasing, "women work for anti-birth employers and women can't find trustworthy fathers."

There are plenty of trustworthy fathers they simply aren't the ones they are angling for

If you say so. Statistics, media, real world conversations, and often lived experience all say otherwise.

Small anecdote, I'm actually saving a bit more with kids because I don't have time to spend the money.

You must not pay for daycare then.

Or was having quite a lot of fun before kids!

To add to this, if you do make enough to overcome said hurdles - you are likely in a hyper competitive job. Two great incomes don’t help much if both parties have to regularly put in more than 40 hours/week.

Yeah exactly. Pick any two:

- low taxes

- a workplace with women in it

- a birth rate that exceeds the replacement rate

Do you want a workplace with women in it? You have to subsidize workplaces giving huge benefits to them if/when they decide to have kids, to the degree that you essentially fire a money cannon at the gender pay gap.

Do you want a birth rate that exceeds the replacement rate? You have to subsidize people trying to get pregnant, people who are pregnant, and people who have kids. Welcome to dropping (more) money bombs on the health care sector and the child care sector.

This is the bare minimum. You also generally need regulations to force businesses to give adequate leave and flex policies, health care benefits (many plans don't cover pregnancy/birth, believe it or not), etc. You also have a huge labor problem when it comes to day care and schooling. You also have a huge problem when it comes to affordable housing for families near any kind of job at all.

Not all women. Some wouldn't worry about a career if they could afford it in order to raise their children and not by someone else.

Most careers don't pay enough to only require a single/1.5 income family.

Most people are hijacked by keeping up with the Jones's.

There are nevertheless vast differences between demographic developments in different parts of the world. Many wealthy countries will see their population decline - unless they manage to compensate the same with drastically increased levels of immigration. It would take a complete reversal of policy to allow for this to happen in traditionally immigration-sceptic cultures like Japan or South Korea.

Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost.

But then there are also completely speculative developments that might happen as a society’s population retracts. Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable for average-income people. As a result, there may be an increase in single-earner families, where the spouse can devote her (or his) time to looking after the children. Which in turn may increase the average number of children that families can afford to have. Again, that’s entirely hypothetical, just one scenario that could result from all this.

The birthrate in most of the third world is also declining, fwiw, and most of these countries are becoming richer. Immigration is a good solution if you have a low-context, high-income country, that poor or chaotic neighbors want to live in, but that's not a given and won't work everywhere forever

If that were true birth rates in places like Japan, with chronically depressed real estate values, would be skyrocketing over time. But it doesn't seem to be the case: more educated people appear to be less apt to have children.

I wonder if in-country population redistribution would counteract any alleviation of realestate prices.

The US has many landlocked, east coast, and great lakes city outflows where you can buy property inexpensively. But people tend to not want to raise families or retire needing medical care in declining areas given the choice to leave.

New York city Manhattan has 600k fewer people than 100 years ago and property price to average salary keeps climbing.

I don’t know what the magic is that to expand property ownership. You see cities with thousands of blighted homes and new build suburbs developing 30-90 min away at prices that are a stretch for even well paid middle class jobs.

I think affordable home building and financing could happen somehow but the trend is not going in that direction.

"Stretch" is putting it mildly. You need to pony up early and start paying that shit down aggressively for it to make sense these days.

Do you mean Manhattan is a "declining area" because of century-long demographic changes? (If they've lost population, I'm guessing it's very poor, high-density housing. Millionaires and billionaires don't want to live 1 family per bedroom.

Possibly I'm misinterpreting ....

That Manhattan remark was extraneous. I wanted to note that decreased population does not always lead to decline in property value. There is a shift from a more widely distributed desirable city middle class to concentrating wealth in coastal cities or new western development.

Yes, agreed on the first part, and I'm not surprised by the second.

> Immigration from other cultures brings its own set of problems of course and may lead to major social and economic issues in these countries. Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce. It may take at least one generation or more to overcome this at great economic cost.

As far as I know, that's false:

The economic cost I'm pretty sure of: Research has shown (but I won't pretend I can cite it) that immigrants are net contributors. One (admittedly completely conjectured) explanation: Anyone motivated and healthy enough to travel to another country, where there's another language, with nothing but their shirt, is going to be very productive. Few people I know would do that.

A good friend's ancestor escaped a prison camp (political prisoner), traveled across a continent, and found their way here. They did very well - they didn't find the obstacles people face in a free, wealthy country to be especially challenging!

Finally, even highly skilled workforces are mostly not high-skilled. Most jobs are otherwise.

Obviously immigration does have negatives. Look at the violence in Sweden. Housing prices in Canada. And why is the mayor of New York City, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, saying they cant handle more immigrants?

Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference to research that indicates its not a problem in a particular way.

Acute, short-term issues don't prove anything. You can have too much money too.

Immigration has served NYC in particular extremely well, over centuries. Probably not a good example!

> Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference

The claim wasn't 'complications', but economic cost. And I already admitted I don't have the research in front of me.

Obviously, my claim wasn't everything is perfect all the time - a claim that applies to nothing in the world.

You'd have to prove the violence is single handledly due to immigration. And not just come up with correlation between place with high immigration and violence rate.

To jest, Monaco is 2/3 immigrants, I haven't heard many people complaining about violence.

The rates in Sweden have been proven to be due to immigration---it is easy to look up and has been researched for years and years. Something like 70% of violent crime and over half of all crime come from people with migrant backgrounds. You shouldn't be allowed to just dismiss this or pretend no one has the data in a serious discussion.

You're saying something that looks close enough on the surface but is fundamentally different.

Crimes perpetuated by people of migrant background doesn't equate to immigration being the cause of these crimes. If we accept that rhetoric, violent crimes are overwhelmingly done by men, so being a men is the cause of violence, right ?

Men, especially young men, do commit violence more than women. Perhaps "being a men is the cause of violence" is not correct, but "being a man makes you much more likely to commit violence".

What is your point?

I think there is a difference between structured immigration programs to let skilled workers in, and giving people asylum. The outcome of letting in refugees who have the trauma of suffering (and maybe participating in) violence all their lives, living in countries that have had educational systems break down, etc will differ from letting in a few skilled workers.

Sure.

Yeah but what happens when it's only conservative governments that limit immigration to skilled workers, and when the left wing government comes into power they expand it to refugees, and economic migrants? Australia and Canada can have the right system, but it doesn't matter if it is being short circuited for short term political gain and ideological reasons

> To jest, Monaco is 2/3 immigrants, I haven't heard many people complaining about violence.

I'd bet most of those are European immigrants, so immigrated from stable countries with good education standards. When we talk about immigrants causing problems we are talking about immigrants from low developed countries where many lacks education, like what happened in the refugee crisis.

So, the topic is not actually immigration but social disruption from low education society members.

I make the difference, as that's the same issue when you reunite a country that has long been under two different regimes. Or when you abolish slavery. Or when there's a rise in homelessness.

The other part of it is, putting the focus on refugees obscures the context of why these people are fleeing their country, and what we have to do with it. It's like discussing about the water leaking from the ceiling, without the context of where it comes from. Perhaps the upper floor getting flooded by leaking pipes merits a bit more thought, I don't know.

> You'd have to prove the violence is single handledly due to immigration

Are you serious? These bombings are all done by immigrants. That's the proof.

> And why is the mayor of New York City, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, saying they cant handle more immigrants?

Being a sanctuary city simply means (fundamentally) not assisting the Federal government in enforcing immigration law (which, in the US, is a matter of Federal responsibility and power).

The current issue NYC is facing is that the city is paying for housing and services for these migrants (who, by my understanding, are asylum seekers)--which of course they don't do for normal immigrants who decide to make a life in New York.

I'm not sure if you've ever been to New York City, but it's a heavily immigrant city that simply wouldn't function without them--at all levels, from taxi drivers up to investment banks and, of course, tech.

> The economic cost I'm pretty sure of: Research has shown (but I won't pretend I can cite it) that immigrants are net contributors.

That very much depends on immigration policies and the way a welfare state is setup.

I am sure that countries with strict policies that mainly allow people to immigrate that a country can be sure these people can contribute to the economy, in such cases sure.

But some countries have very lax policies and (in the name of humanitarian aid) allow many people in from poor areas of the world. At the same time some of these countries might have a large welfare state, with benefits like free or cheap healthcare, schooling, state pensions, medical benefits either free or heavily subsidized, unemployment benefits, etcetera.

For those countries immigration is a huge cost. Many immigrants moving to such countries will never (be able to) work. But they will use a large amount of resources from the welfare state. And perhaps such countries hope children of these kinds of immigrants will be a net benefit, but only time will tell.

Because one additional hurdle is that for many of such countries it’s not expected (and there is little push) for immigrants to integrate into society.

For these countries unrestricted mass immigration will mean the dismantling of the welfare state. As there are too many users of welfare services and not enough people paying taxes to finance the welfare state.

Many Northern European countries fall onto this group.

Do you have evidence? At least I read a study (that I'm not citing, admittedly).

"The total cost of immigration for the period 1995-2019 for the Netherlands was 400 billion euros."

Quote from the conclusion of one of the studies mentioned here: https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2028#:~:text=The%20researc....

I can only speak for my own region in western Europe (Benelux / Germany / France), for us mass immigration especially from non-EU countries has a very high financial and social cost. So high that both in Belgium and the Netherlands there is a large majority to be found in favor of drastically reducing immigration, recent polls show. However in almost all west European countries you've got governments doing the exact opposite of the people's will. In my own country, Belgium, we've got a very generous social security system and as such we attract a lot of immigration that is not interested in working (and/or simply very low skilled, often illiterate).

Among non-EU origins we're at 44.5 % inactivity, not studying nor working, (!!!!!) which is the worst score in all of Europe. Belgium itself is of course partially to blame because our social security system is too flexible, too generous and does not push to work.

Mass immigration from strongly divergent cultures is damaging western society, causing higher poverty, more crime, and rampant feelings of alienation, tearing at the fabric of social values and cohesion. Look at Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden... Go for a stroll in Brussels or Frankfurt, have a look at the numerous ghettos there. Mass immigration is a lose-lose thing, both for the host country and for the newcomers who often sign up for a life in abject poverty.

The single biggest irony in US politics (the surface level politics, I don't mean actual politics) is that the catholic cultures the so-called mexicans are coming from have more in common with the conservatives trying to keep them out than the liberals who want to let them in...

They really don't though. Conservatives have a lot more in common with liberals than either do with central americans.

Maybe if you measure it by what hit radio songs they remember from childhood, but the things most people would consider more fundamental paint a different picture. If you take this source I haven't vetted[0] (I'm getting this from common knowledge, not surveys, to be honest) the evidence seems pretty clear that immigration from south of the border is actually supporting our most longstanding conservative cultural institution, far from "diluting" or "eroding" it.

If any reader is curious, the irony only developed around the time a certain presidential campaign normalized anti-immigrant rhetoric; until then the "old conservatives" were fully aware of the importance of immigration to business owners and the lack of any real cultural incompatibility and never took any steps to reduce it. They sided very much on the elimination of the welfare state which was the solution they saw for the supposed cost issue (highly questionable to begin with, in a country with as little in the way of social programs as the US after the 1980s drew to a close. In a system designed for people that thought social security should depend on the number of hours you have worked, it is hard to imagine what costs they'd be objecting to.)

The way the shift in alignment was carried out always struck me as a sobering example of the shortness of memories, or the impermanence of the public's convictions.

[0] https://www.prb.org/resources/immigration-gives-catholicism-...

I'm sorry but the idea that I have less in common with someone I grew up with for 20 years than I do with someone from Honduras whose language I dont speak and whose culture I know nothing about, just because my preschool friend and I have different political opinions and the honduran attends (a totally different) church a bit more. This is just ridiculous to me. Do you really think this? The only thing that bound you together with other Americans was pop songs? The idea Trump's campaign "normalised anti-immigrant rhetoric" is absurd. The American public (i.e. a majority therof) has not supported an increase in immigration when polled for 60 years (despite it increasing continuously). That is consistent. The public has never asked for this. There wasn't some sudden realignment demonstrating "the impermanence of the public's convictions". There was a mass movement of people who finally reacted to decades and decades of being of being ignored by their government. Continuing to try and blame everything on Trump instead of face the reality of what happened is either totally naive or just bad faith. What was Trump the result of? https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx#:~:text=L....

I mean... Most conservatives like the Hispanics... But don't like illegal immigration. Heck ... A lot of Hispanics don't like illegal immigration. Conservatives tend to like order not hate Mexicans. You're making a complete caricature of the gop.

I am not happy about this state of affairs, but the "I like laws" reason is totally absent from any of the rhetoric I am hearing from either the elected officials (who mainly make allusions to "border patrol" without making any coherent statement of their values that some could object to) or the spectrum of media outlets (who appear to be stirring fears of cultural incompatibility and the cartels). That opinion is kind of like the libertarian position from a few years ago, "the government has no business regulating marriage at all," in that it's a clever alternative to what I can only with any objectivity call the winning answer, that is found nowhere in mainstream politics.

Yeah, I am aware how absurd it is that "if we want more immigration we should increase the number of work visas awarded to less skilled laborers plus many other things like that, not turn a blind eye to a second class citizenry" is a fringe way of looking at the problem, but that's the cake that's been served us.

They've been doing a pretty good job of making caricatures of themselves since 2016. My memory stretches back far enough to videos of Trump rallies where people screamed "keep out those dirty beaners!!" etc at mention of "the wall". I remember "taco trucks on every corner". I remember the notion that Mexico is "sending" people.

I remember the Muslim Ban, the hate against Syrian refugees, the popularity of Trump among people who believe in the "great replacement" theory. I remember family separation, and supposedly God-fearing "conservatives" proudly saying that the suffering of those children were the parents fault for trying to flee ravaged societies and give their kids a better life.

Wanting to crack down harder on illegal immigration is a valid political position and a reasonable goal. But that wasn't all what that shit was about. I don't know if you've truly fooled yourself, but you're not fooling me. I'm never forgetting, and I'm never forgiving.

Nah, they don't like legal immigration either. It is not like their "I object only illegal" was in any way believable.

Catholic voters are generally evenly split between the parties. Opposition to abortion is probably the primary thing drawing them to the Republicans, they don’t necessarily share that many values with the evangelicals/loonies (not that they don’t have their own set of problems).

> "The total cost of immigration for the period 1995-2019 for the Netherlands was 400 billion euros."

> Quote from the conclusion of one of the studies mentioned here: https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2028#:~:text=The%20researc....

Thanks for providing some actual research ... It's not exactly a politically neutral report (but admittedly I'm not providing anything better):

The authors of the study from the University of Amsterdam rightly refer to the American economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who explained that the choice at stake is between continuing to accept migrants and maintaining the welfare state.

However, the politically correct politicians and the media look the other way. They refuse to draw conclusions from the unequivocal results of objective scientific research on the negative effects of immigration. The native taxpayer who bears the cost of immigration is paying a heavy price – literally and figuratively – a price that is rising every day.

In most northern European countries the only economically productive immigrants are from other european or american populations. It depends where the immigration comes from.

Honestly, America is an outlier in how well we integrate people. From my perspective at least I was shocked at how wide the gulf was between native and immigrant in the Nordic countries. Some other countries in the anglosphere also do pretty well including the UK.

Do you think America actually integrates people well? I don't think I agree, outside of a certain strata of more prestigious institutions and firms. I.e. Google may integrate people pretty well to google. But broadly speaking I think we just have a lot of space and the groups move around each other, while being vastly different. It is something tourists comment on, that they stumble into different neighborhoods and feel they are in a totally different place. There are whole sections of my hometown which basically operate in a different language and where everyone has moved out. It doesn't seem like integration to me. I think people just move around each other in America and can afford to do so more.

I do think it is worse in parts of scandanavia and parts of paris for example. But i think neighborhoods in America are fairly segregated and people would choose that even more if possible.(In that sense maybe the government does do somewhat better job by preventing that, idk).

Yes. I mean my parents were immigrants from another country and both their sons married Americans (not even white Americans, but Americans nevertheless) and move to the real 'innards' of America. Also, I have nothing in common with people from my parent's country. Even the food we like from the 'home country' is completely different. I much prefer American-styled ethnic food from my parent's country than anything you'd get there.

Unlike most European countries or even Canada though, immigrant Americans consider themselves ... Americans. I mean... my parents are honestly pretty hard core trump supporters and contrary to popular belief, they've been very welcomed at all these supposedly 'racist' events.

> It is something tourists comment on, that they stumble into different neighborhoods and feel they are in a totally different place. There are whole sections of my hometown which basically operate in a different language and where everyone has moved out. It doesn't seem like integration to me. I think people just move around each other in America and can afford to do so more.

Sure, in the big cities where there are lots of immigrants it can certainly be like that. In the more provincial parts of the country you can go -- as I did -- to Oktoberfest celebrated in an old German town, except all the people who live there are now hispanic, philipino, or mixed whatever and are all happily doing the Polka and drinking beer while saluting the American flag.

Also, typically in those 'ethnic' neighborhoods you speak of... people are very patriotic. For example, my brother married into a big hispanic family and some of the older generation definitely speaks Spanish mainly and a lot of the town they live in is primarily Spanish, but they're incredibly patriotic and love America.

> It is something tourists comment on, that they stumble into different neighborhoods and feel they are in a totally different place.

I totally get why tourists might find it weird, but as a native born American, I stumble into many ethnic enclaves in the US and feel pretty at home. Most people aren't used to that.

Yes, in Sweden.

Immigrants have a substantially higher unemployment rate https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9819060/

Swedish PM says integration has failed https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swedish-pm-says-integra...

> Do you have evidence? At least I read a study (that I'm not citing, admittedly).

Sure, but it’s cited in a Dutch newspaper article. You can copy and paste in Google Translate: https://archive.ph/HvG8u

Sweden. Compare its situation to Denmark and Norway.

Allowing unrestricted immigration from very culturally different countries with hardly any income/educational requirements seem to have had significant economic, social and political cost.

>One (admittedly completely conjectured) explanation: Anyone motivated and healthy enough to travel to another country, where there's another language, with nothing but their shirt, is going to be very productive.

Supposing that this is true, what happens in poor countries when they selectively lose their healthiest and most productive people to emigration?

The "Economics Explained" YouTube channel has a video called "Skills Wars Are The New Trade Wars", which touches on your question.

Brain drain is a well-known issue. Possibly productive labor drain is also?

Japan's an interesting case, as they're absolutely open to immigration, especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.) to work in human intensive fields (e.g. assistance to elderly people) but don't want them to stay and build a life, so in these fields working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew, and near impossible to convert to generic visas.

Basically it's the classic have your cake and eat it too.

A nitpick:

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce.

They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc.

> Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable

It usually doesn't happen: general property value drops down, but as the population decreases the cities are restructured, and some portions of the land are completely abandonned. As a result, the amount of actually valuable property that are near active businesses in easy to live areas doesn't change much (or even decreases, as there's fewer working people)

Why have your cake and eat it? It gives more people from poor countries to experience Japan and earn money there. Then they come back and have money to open businesses and more knowledge and exposure to first world practices. It also distribute the opportunity between more people rather than giving everything to few lucky ones while the rest don't get any opportunity to improve their lives. It also prevents all the obvious problems of integration and fractured society which affects second generation immigrants in many western countries. It's a win win situation for everybody.

> especially from closer countries (Philipines, Thailand etc.)

This is akin to grouping Mexico with other Latin American countries when discussing American immigration. The situation is fundamentally on a country by country basis, rather than geographical proximity.

What struck out to me is mentioning Thailand. There is literally 9x Vietnamese immigrants in Japan than Thai. Even Nepal is twice as many Thai. Then there’s Brazil. Meanwhile, Taiwan, despite having the proximity and cultural/social/political ties to Japan (I was at a Japanese island where I can literally see Taiwan’s mountain) is only the 10th. It’s not a matter of difference in socioeconomic development either. The top two immigrant countries to Japan is Korea and China.

Proximity is a weak correlation. The commonality here is that these are Asian countries.

> Japan's an interesting case, as they're absolutely open to immigration

> working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew

That's not immigration, those are guest workers.

> They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc.

Immigrants with a certain heritage (MENAPT) are on average unqualified and are a burden on the host social system their whole life[1]. It's certainly what I can witness in Germany as well, however we actively seek to suppress any studies that could show this. Up until 2017 we had at least criminal statistics that showed that it's also a broader problem regarding crime[2], but we axed these statistics of course.

[1]: The Economist: Why have Danes turned against immigration? (https://archive.ph/TSsQa)

[2]: German Police Crime Statistics 2017 (https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...)

I tend to separate refugees and migrants, as the process and framing is very different. From a cursory look I'm not the only one [0].

In particular, in many countries refugees and asylum seeker can't do general work or have special conditions attached to it, so it's another whole can of worm.

[0] https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/refugees-and-migrants-fre...

> I tend to separate refugees and migrants, as the process and framing is very different. From a cursory look I'm not the only one.

This is certainly an important distinction, however refugees are a small minority of people coming here. Most come from countries that are classified safe* and most even pass several safe countries to come here, which makes them migrants by default.

*: However, they could be in danger because of their religion, sexuality, race. It happens, but it is rare.

Is the problem in the west due to westerners prefer to not have any children and enjoy their riches or is it because the society is very top heavy and that the a lot of financially challenged westerners opt not to have children? It's both in my opinion but with a heavier weight for financial struggle. I'm an immigrant and other immigrants from my generation are having less children than their parents and are not doing as well financially (includes housing, Canaduh). Immigration does not answer the question of why people are not having more children.

My spouse and I struggled with whether it was ethical to have children. It was a financial burden of course but one we felt capable of meeting.

I don't think it's really a question of "enjoy your riches," because no matter what your status, nobody can "afford" children, not even the ultra high net worth individuals. It's a burden regardless.

But I think therein lies the answer. There was a time not all that long ago that not having children was a burden. Who was going to bring in the harvest, or at the very least supervise bringing in the harvest? Who could you really trust to take care of you properly when you got old? And of course, there's a biological compulsion as well, but that's much easier to sidestep only in the last couple generations.

Just what exactly about having kids is not ethical? If ethics is a human construct-and you are contributing to having no more humans around…I don’t know, it just seems like a strange way of framing it.

As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.

No child can consent to being born.

Sure, but if you were to poll everyone on if they were happy to be born, it'd be overwhelmingly yes. Your odds are pretty good of having a kid that was happy that you doinked.

> Sure, but if you were to poll everyone on if they were happy to be born, it'd be overwhelmingly yes

...why do you assume it would be yes?

There'd be a lot fewer people, otherwise. From a pragmatic point of view, we've likely evolved to answer yes to that question, otherwise we would've been outcompeted by another species with a thirst to live and reproduce.

Not necessarily, there are a lot of species that are functional no-ops, such as the Luna moths that grow up to be unable to eat anything as they have no mouths. They can only procreate, continuing the cycle. They are no-ops because there is nothing they can do besides procreate, they cannot even obtain sustenance. So, they might say that it was not worth being born, had they been able to be polled.

The survival instinct is still active if someone would rather not have been born, as is the instinct and desire to reproduce.

Yeah, probably.

But if, as hotpotamus suggests, "consent" is a useful way to look at this, then that's not good enough. You can't randomly do surgery on people just because you believe there's a 90% chance they'll be happy with the results.

I’m pretty sure you can.

Someone is unconscious and dying, you can save them with surgery, surely it’s highly unethical to wait for their explicit consent?!

If you polled me, the answer would be no. I'm not exactly unhappy about it either, but I'm conflicted enough about it that it's not something I will do to another.

Applying the ethics of consent to this topic is probably just shallow reasoning. There are much better frameworks, but if all you have is a hammer I understand the temptation:)

The burden it places on yourself, your child, and the incremental burden it places on everyone else living on the planet?

If the ethical thing to do is increase the total happiness (or perhaps contentedness, or satisfaction) of all humans...well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.

To your other point, now that I'm a parent, it's easy to see that becoming a parent made me into a better person, but there was no way I could have known that that would happen before becoming one.

Increasing human prosperity/reducing human suffering is largely a function of technological advancement, wealth distribution and avoiding wars. All of these require a large population of educated humans to drive forward and since yours will likely be educated, probably net positive.

You couldn't observe that around you growing up? It's was clear to me growing up that big families and children with siblings were mostly happier. It didn't matter if the family was rich or barely getting by.

> well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.

All of history has been an steady march forward of more prosperity and less suffering accomplished by an entire population of, on average, average people.

> Just what exactly about having kids is not ethical? If ethics is a human construct-and you are contributing to having no more humans around…

We're really really far from extinction. That's just simply not an issue at all.

Ah, we are really just one smart kid away from extinction.

Something something boson something neutron, and the Earth goes kaboom.

Children can be very dangerous.

True, don't let your kid play with the large hadron collider at work!

If finances weren't an issue most couples would have more children. It's very practical to have them. I had an an awesome childhood because holidays were so much fun because my parents generation were so many and had lots of children too. We have a huge extended family. It's great/practical to have a huge family / clan regardless if its the 1800s or now.

Why do rich countries have fewer children than poor countries?

Why do rich people in rich countries have fewer children than poor people in rich countries?

Nowhere is it seen that more money correlates to more children.

Prefer? It’s more cannot afford to have kids

It's essentially because of western individualism, de-emphasizing the family unit and prioritizing individual fulfilment. Especially with women, if you believe the doctrine of female choice operates in the world.

Second generation and later of immigrants very rapidly adopt the social customs of the country they live in. This is seen everywhere. Vietnamese to Australia. Filipinas to the US. Congolese to Nigeria. Marocs to Spain.

Lots of countries outside the west are not having kids, especially the collectivist cultures of Asia which directly contradicts your "western individualism" view.

If you look at the actual countries, it is obvious that the young people not having kids are also relatively individualistic.

How is that obvious? Where are the statistics to show that they are individualistic?

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time digging up statistics for you, because I think it is obvious for anyone who has spent significant time in urban areas of developed countries. The youth are obviously individualistic, focused on short-term personal fulfillment, and building a family is the opposite of that.

There just aren't throngs of young people living "traditionally" (non-individualistically) yet not having kids.

There's nothing "obvious" about that. If it's so obvious, you should be able to "dig up statistics." Otherwise, you're just using your anecdotes as some statement of fact. I could do the same and you would be unable to refute them, but I don't think that makes for very engaging discussion on this forum, then.

No way. Youth actually want to belong to a group and fit in unless they are comfortable being outcasts in school (to to college) and not having a social life. The youth are obsessed with cool things and trendy/hip things. They are the most easy target for marketing and sales.

Well, again coming from a "female choice" perspective, young Chinese women are striving to have careers (or at least fun) before starting a family. They are being told to do this, and most people conform to expectations. (Choice doesn't mean fully independent first-principles decision making.)

The rhetoric is still about "increasing female labor force participation".[1]

For clarity, the thing you do first is your priority. This is known as "revealed preference" in economics. And careers are individual things, not collective.

Also for background, fertility declines secularly from mid-teens to mid forties where it goes to zero. Waiting has two costs: you have fewer years in which to have children, and you are less likely to have them in each year. (There is a third one in increased risk of congenital illness in the child too.) Nearly every woman knows these things.

1. https://thechinaproject.com/2022/03/08/women-at-work-in-chin...

So.. The answer is not giving women any choice and have them produce babies on demand?

Can you really not see how this doesn't work in modern society? Women fought hard to have rights.

Where and what era you talking about this women baby machines?

Depends on the country. In Holland this was about up until WWII. After that in Catholic areas. My dad was born after the war and from a family of 7.

In other countries it continued even longer.

What does on demand mean exactly? Where they coerced?

Yes. By society (married women had to give up their government jobs until into the 60s!) and by the church. After a couple had their last kid about a year ago they'd get a visit from the priest to remind them there was still more 'work' to be done..

> Chinese

Exceptionally idiotic communist policies probably played a much bigger role. At least initially. If you ban families from having more than a single child and perform forced abortions or impose massive fines on those that dare to have a second one. Well.. I’m not sure what else you could expect

Um, China destroys the hypothesis.

Individualism is great. There's no point following books or customs from centuries ago when the world has long moved on. A farmer 200 years ago didn't really need to learn to read and write. Just pay off his patron landowner that was exploiting him and use whatever scraps that were left to try and survive.

These days we can move beyond survival and into real fulfillment. And we need to, as well. We can't live without knowledge anymore. Critical thought brought us this far. And we're really far from extinction. We could do with a few billion less people if we want to be sustainable. The transition will be tough for those getting old but it'll be worth it.

I don't think so. You could go anywhere in the world before the 80s and they had mostly more children. Even the west. Female choice is a trade off not a benefit.

I think there are a number of factors at play here. I think a large part of it is that having children is extremely expensive. You need a bigger house, a bigger car, need to buy more food and then pay for their entire life for about 20 years or so. Given the cost to just sustain one’s self these days I think it is not a surprise that many people opt to have fewer children or none at all.

I think that also there is a culture shift that has taken place, there is less pressure to create a traditional family unit. More virtue is given to autonomy and following your dreams than settling down. In addition to this, contraceptives such as IUDs have become much more socially accepted, so less people are getting pregnant. Naturally all of this adds up to a drastically lower average fertility rate than a few decades ago.

In summary, it’s a bit of culture shift, economics and science which has led us to where we are today. The result is that in the next few decades we will either have to start having more children again, or rework the way our economies are structured to account for less growth in exchange for a focus on sustainability and providing a livable wage for all people. Its likely that if we keep with the status quo, quality of life will keep going down until we hit a breaking point.

For me it's definitely about the money. It's not that I can't afford children, it's that I can't afford them AND also do things like stop working while giving my family the lifestyle I want. Ultimately, it boils down to financials. Boomer parents aren't willing to help either nor have they asked for grandchildren. Seems to be working out alright for now.

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce

I think this is overblown and repeated gospel.

People in factories are trained to work the tools and machines they work. What's the barrier for an immigrant besides language?

Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? I have an infinite list of jobs that do not require much education and even a longer one of jobs that require it, but only on the resume.

Also, are you assuming immigrants at home don't study, nobody of them is a mechanic or electrician or plumber or carpenter?

Let's be honest: immigrants aren't less educated for western societies. It's us who have went through 20 years of studies to center forms in a web page or work as secretaries or scrum masters or bank clerks.

> Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver?

Math, low skilled immigrants often lacks basic education and can't properly read numbers. That makes them unfit even for most jobs we nowaday call "unskilled" like shop clerk etc. There are billions of such people in the world and when they immigrate there isn't much you can do to get them a job.

There is a reason why most unskilled jobs today require high school, because without basic math you can't do much at all. Immigrants with high school equivalent education or higher can integrate just fine, immigrants with lower level than that are hard to deal with so most countries refuse to take them in but those are the majority of people in low income countries.

In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids.

> In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids.

Some immigrants to Sweden have such different cultural traditions that they even find it difficult to interpret signs and (western) images. They have difficulties learning how to tell time on a clock.

"- The students don't even have the tradition of reading signs. Don't look at symbols, image interpretation is very difficult, numbers and learning the clock is very complicated, says Johanna Karlman, SFI teacher in Borlänge."

(Note: The immigration to Borlänge is mostly from Somalia.)

Source: Sweden Public Service Radio P1, https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_t...

As a slight counterpoint to this, there is a lot of implicit knowledge and group cohesion in most workplaces that immigrants can have a very hard time picking up on and integrating into. When I moved to another country I thought I fit in well with my coworkers, but it turned out that my style of conflict resolution was absolutely incompatible with theirs, and I had to relearn how to communicate with my boss, despite the boss being fluent in English. This cultural misfit set me up to be manipulated into the position of group enemy by one of the more socially savvy and manipulative coworkers.

More generally, the challenges in communication are a well known barrier to outsourcing knowledge work.

It's also just false based off of the numbers. In the US at least immigrants are more likely to open businesses and less likely to commit crimes. Immigrants are just as likely to have bachelors or post grad degrees than non immigrants, and are more likely to get associates degrees. Children of immigrants are more likely to get degrees than the average population. Immigration is a net positive economically speaking for developed countries.

Those are vetted immigrants. Vetted immigration is positive for the country, unvetted immigration tends to not be.

Edit: And the "less likely to commit crimes" part is a large part due to USA having such a high crime rate to start with. Last time I looked unvetted immigrants to Sweden and USA had roughly the same crime rate, but in USA that reduced the crime rate and in Sweden it massively increased it. So even if everything else is the same "immigrants increase crime" can be true in one country and false in another just due to the original crime levels being different.

I don’t think Sweden prioritized highly skilled/educated immigrants like the US did. I wouldn’t be surprised if even the “vetted” ones there have fairly high crime rates.

Tends not to be, yet the Americas and even today's Europe prove the contrary.

> Immigrants are just as likely to have bachelors or post grad degrees than non immigrants, and are more likely to get associates degrees.

Can you even legally immigrate into the US unless you at least a have bachelors degree (with some exceptions)?

If all western countries only accept educated people. Well.. it’s not going to end well for any of the host countries if migration rates increase significantly.

My statement included legal and illegal immigrants.

>drastically increased levels of immigration

why though? Why not just figure out how to sustain your population? There may be a period of time where there aren't enough people but that could be a beneficial time where salaries increase, technology improves, etc.

People are not having kids in the west because we’ve made life/kids to expensive- immigration is just a way to keep enriching the rich and suppressing wages

The decline in birth rates seems like it has little to do with people being unable to afford children and more with the culture.

Richer countries have fewer kids. Richer people have fewer kids.

Immigration is a poor substitute for having families, and mass migration is a guaranteed headache. A host population can absorb a trickle, it cannot absorb a deluge, in which case, what's the point? You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers. "Before we go, here's how you operate the light switches..." And even then, that assumes that the replacement population won't absorb the same self-destructive features of the host culture that produced the demographic decline in the first place.

Where consumerism is high, procreation is low, as children and parenthood are antithetical to the ethos of consumption. This ethos infects and corrupts every domain of the culture and conspires against families by creating a mutually enabling thicket of disincentives, consumerizing and commoditizing everything, including sexual intercourse and sexual relations, in general. Contraception and sterile "sex" are paradigmatic of consumerism. Perhaps it is not an accident that Dante places the practitioners of such a lifestyle in the same circle of Hell as usurers: the former take something fecund and renders it sterile, while the latter take something sterile and pretend to render it fecund.

"in which case, what's the point?"

I cannot imagine what system of ethics you are operating from that you would have to ask this question. The point, always, is to provide the best possible life to the greatest number of people, without regard to where those people come from. My goal in life is to maximize human happiness, I do not care what nation a person is from. Unless I'm misreading your words, or you chose your words clumsily, you seem to want a system that works for some set of people but not another set of people. But I'm curious, one what basis would you chose one set of people, and then why would you care about them at all, rather than care about some other group? If you're not going to care about the happiness of all people, then it seems to me you should be consistent and not care about anyone's happiness. But if you honestly care about one group, but not some other group, I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them?

"You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers"

I think you meant to write "One generation has apparently found it is possible to maximize their happiness without having children, and now gratefully receives help from new arrivals so as to take care of them during old age, as they have no children to care for them."

I cannot imagine what system of ethics you are operating from that you would have to ask this question

Catholic (-ish) ultra right wing nationalism, would be my guess. Surprisingly popular in some places. You can pretty much read stuff like that in the newspaper and, to a degree, on billboards.

Your reply was too interesting not to try to answer :)

> I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them?

I have two answers for this

1) It is not that, say, I care more about the danish than the syrian.

It is that I find sad that a culture would decide to implode, no matter what culture it is.

This works on a set of assumptions, all of which might be false, but are justifiable (it seems to me) if not correct (for that is harder to predict)

* Receiving a big influx of immigrants that are 20 years or older * Having them and their descendants compose the bulk of your population after a certain year (say, 2070) * Those 2 points significantly affect the makeup of a culture

And moral weights: * That the existence of a culture itself has moral weight comparable to the well-being of individuals

--- 2) There is also the perhaps more immediate issue: If indeed immigrants make the largest part of the population of a country when you are old and need help, can you *really* keep them from voting in a pattern that reduces your ability to get help? For example, from taxing your accumulated wealth now that you are no longer working, or to cut your benefits.

This fear is not unreasonable, and one might be saddened of the (apparent) shortsighedness of not addressing it. Or angry (if one thinks this will happen) that the current middle class and poor of the european country are being sold out by the rich of that country -- they get more labour today, and to live confortably in their old age.

Again it is a matter of weights, you can think that the increase in welfare for the immigrants in question outweights (or even far outweights) these costs and risks (one is a cost only if you value the culture independently of the people, another is a cost only in a probabilistic sense). But neither is absurd on the face of it, and it seems reasonable to be sad that "a culture is doing this to itself".

--------------

The point here is to establish a degree of reasonableness to the other side, so that both sides can start to reconcile their values rather than dismiss them, not to state which side is right (a thing that I frankly do not know)

> Where consumerism is high, procreation is low, as children and parenthood are antithetical to the ethos of consumption. This ethos infects and corrupts every domain of the culture and conspires against families by creating a mutually enabling thicket of disincentives, consumerizing and commoditizing everything, including sexual intercourse and sexual relations, in general. Contraception and sterile "sex" are paradigmatic of consumerism.

I have to disagree here. Having more money to spend on consumer items is not the only reason to not want kids.

For me it's not about money but about time. I don't want to waste time raising kids that I could have used pursuing interesting opportunities to enrich myself. Which are usually not things that make me financially richer either. And also, I just don't want them. There is no attraction to fatherhood for me.

But I would not call myself consumerist at all. I don't buy that much stuff, don't have a car, only a $100 second-hand TV, buy a new phone once every 4 years or so... But I do have a really interesting life. I learn new things every day, constantly move my horizons. I couldn't do that if I were tied down with a family. Many of my friends do have them but if we want to go on a weekend away we have to plan it months in advance because they have to find a common path between all the birthday parties, judo competitions and dance performances of their offspring. I can just do whatever I want on a whim.

And once people become parents their sex life becomes pretty much null and void too.

There is definitely a correlation between high standards of living and smaller families yes. But I don't think this is because people want to spend more. It's just that they don't really need a big family for "pension" reasons, don't usually care about religious directives anymore (think the big catholic labourer families of old) and want their life to be more than about having kids. Women don't just want to be a baby machine anymore. It takes a toll on their bodies too.

And I think it's good. For environmental reasons our population should be stable, not growing rapidly. 2 children per couple is perfect.

Don’t think of consumerism as consumer products. Think of it as “consumption”, rather than creation. A focus on consuming and experiencing things in the world, not building them - of which a family with children is a prime example.

But I build a lot. Most of my hobbies involve creativity and making of things like electronics and 3D printing.

I don't think having a family would be as valuable even.

Well I don’t want to be too harsh, but from my point of view, the idea that your hobbies are more important than the creation of life is a very shallow consumeristic one. It’s a very limited, self-focused way of being in the world.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that you can share your hobbies with your children.

I just don't think creating life is that special :) or necessary. There's already too many humans in this world. And I don't view it as something sacred.

In fact if I'd want a child I'd adopt one and give them a better life. I think it's better to lift an orphan out of poverty than to reproduce myself. Also, I have too many mental issues I would not want to bestow upon a child.

But I'm just not interested in either.

None of my friends who have kids have done this out of a sense of community or purpose though. It was a choice driven by their own desire, just as selfish as my own reasons not to have any.

> There's already too many humans in this world.

what does this actually mean? people say this but i dont understand it.

Why is a hobby shallow but the creation of life deep? Surely that depends on the hobby as well. Having a child can be seen, in one aspect, as a very expensive and time consuming hobby.

What is so special about creating life, anyway?

Everything humans create depends on humanity existing, and humanity ceases to be without children.

Human life is a prerequisite for everything humans create.

It's not as if humans will go extinct. The UN predicts we will peak at 10 billion in 2100 and stabilize at 5 billion overall afterwards. When we were last at 5 billion, it was 1987, so it's not like we didn't build human societies before then. Those who want kids will have them and those who don't will not.

> I learn new things every day, constantly move my horizons. I couldn't do that if I were tied down with a family.

Try explaining these concepts to children. Now that’s a challenge!

> And once people become parents their sex life becomes pretty much null and void too.

I can guarantee that’s not true for everyone. Of course, maybe even some single couples get bored of having sex, and maybe even single men see their libido drop with age!

> For environmental reasons our population should be stable, not growing rapidly.

That’s a common trope pushed by degrowth activists like Greenpeace, but not actually true. Technology gives us means to so more with less, so we are far from the limits of even what Earth can support, let alone our solar system.

> Try explaining these concepts to children. Now that’s a challenge!

Could be but I don't want to :) even in work I don't have the patience for training others because it slows me down.

> I can guarantee that’s not true for everyone. Of course, maybe even some single couples get bored of having sex, and maybe even single men see their libido drop with age!

Of course it's not the case for everyone but on average it is for sure. All my friends say they simply don't have enough time or opportunity. Let alone doing more wild stuff like going to sensuality resorts or swinger clubs. It becomes more of a standard up/down "let's get this over with before the kid wakes up" kinda thing.

> Technology gives us means to so more with less, so we are far from the limits of even what Earth can support, let alone our solar system.

Well it hasn't actually delivered that. Right now we're doing more with much more.

Look at the ocean full of plastic, the ever rising oil use. The climate crisis.

If technology can give us those means it should really start doing so pretty soon before we really screw the world beyond repair.

And really, exponential growth has to stop somewhere. Eventually it has to. Better to do it before the absolute limits are reached and it becomes another acute crisis like we have now with the climate.

No, we’re fucking up the planet pretty badly, and our impact is (consumption x population).

Technology may give us those means, but we seem prone to use most of those advances to do much more, reducing or even reversing the overall savings.

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce.

Not typical for Canada as an example.

The bigger point is that immigration and it's effects are deeply shaped by policy.

Japan's immigration policies are actually pretty welcoming to educated foreigners. They publish all the rules, if you meet the criteria (basically getting any white collar job here will do the trick) then you can get a work visa, and there is a well-documented and formulaic long-term path to getting permanent residence (which is very fast if you meet the highly skilled professional criteria, which actually aren't a very high bar; you can get most of the way there by having a college degree, reasonable pay and not being old).

The problem is more that they speak a language that people do not want to spend time learning, do not have a particularly dynamic economy, and have issues with work culture, gender inequality, and so on that turns off many foreigners from making the jump.

Human population will also change a lot. Subpopulations with very high fertility (like fundamentalist Christians or hassidic Jews or the population of Chad) will be a much larger proportion of the population while groups like the South Koreans decline.

I expect this to have pretty large effects,though predicting what those will be seems difficult.

The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution explores the possible consequences in great detail. It's happened many times before, though never on this scale.

Interestingly, global religiosity is projected to increase by 2050, because most of the atheist/secular societies (especially China) are in a state of population decline: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/25/4607977...

I don’t think we can assume that children will continue in their parents religion though. The US, for instance, is much less religious than it used to be.

The genetics (and heritability more generally) of religiosity are fairly well understood.

Fairly, but Western countries started as very religious and are losing that at varying rates. Heritability is real but far from absolute.

All other things being equal I'd expect it to reach an equilibrium. I don't think all other things are equal in this case, and nonbelief becomes more attractive over time (for better or worse).

Are they? Would you elaborate on it or link some reading material? I've never heard of religion being heritary and your claim is pretty strong to just throw out there without any additional information.

One 2005 twin study [0] found religiosity was approximately 40% genetic.

[1] argues that pro-religion alleles are likely to become more common over time, since in the contemporary world religious people (on average) have more children than the non-religious

It seems unlikely there is any single "God gene". Rather, certain personality traits (such as agreeableness) increase the likelihood of a person accepting religion, and genetics contributes to those traits, which in turn indirectly contributes to religiosity

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15745438/

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3125629/

The western world is an exception to the general norm. Virtually everyone in the country where I’m from follows their parent’s religion, for example. Anyway, the folks at Pew are pretty smart. I’m sure they’re accounting for that.

>The western world is an exception to the general norm

I see this quoted a lot, but I don't think it's true:

+ There are plenty of places (and with a significant population) outside the western world that are quite secular and have become more secular in the past decades + There are places in the West that have become more religious. If by "Western" you mean just "Western Europe", then, yeah, that's a specially secular place but it's also a tiny place in both population and area.

China, Japan and South Korea are quite secular in many ways. A big chunk of Latin America is now quite secular too. You already have ~1.5B people fairly secular people that are non western.

On the other hand, countries like Poland or Hungary (which I'm guessing we would classify as Western) are becoming more religious.

> On the other hand, countries like Poland or Hungary (which I'm guessing we would classify as Western) are becoming more religious.

That is not true. Where did you get that idea?

The US is much less religious with respect to the traditionally recognized religions (e.g. Christianity), but it seems that religious energy is still ever present in non-traditional religions.

> religious energy is still ever present in non-traditional religions.

Which would those be? Are you talking about stuff like the rise of astrology and numerology in the US?

I think they are talking about the fervent fringe political ideologies, like trumpism or being very woke.

In a nominal sense this is true because people fairly rarely renounce their religious identity, qualitatively it's almost certainly not the case. On paper 84% of the Irish population are still Christian, de facto the country is much more secular than it was decades ago resulting in legalization of abortion, gay marriage, removal of blasphemy laws, the world's fifth gay head of state etc.

Secularization within formally religious groups is progressing much faster than change in demographics.

A few hundred million Europeans are becoming more secular. While a billion Indians are becoming more religious.

A billion Indians are becoming more religious? Really?

Politics is polarising along lines of religious identity, yes, but increasing religious behaviour? Going to temples more, donating more of their incomes?

Are you sure?

It is not a subpopulation but Islam followers also have high fertility rates that challenges politics in countries such as France.

Islam is especially potent on the fertility front because marriage and having children are considered a central moral obligation: https://www.alislam.org/book/pathway-to-paradise/islamic-mar.... Even among relatively secular muslims, the concept of “child free” would be something you wouldn’t say out loud.

Islam is all about growing the percentage of people that follow the religion. Having lived in the Middle East for the first half of my life I can report that this idea is baser level, seamlessly incorporated into every person in the population. I’m honestly not concerned about them though, what I am concerned about it sub Saharan Africa because they can’t seem to take care of the people they already have.

Percentage or number?

Both really

The same thing appears in the Bible so forgive my skepticism that Muslims will be unique among followers of Abrahamic religions in not facing the same pressures of the modern world everyone else does.

I think it’s likely that within a few decades they go through a similar cultural change to what Christians went through.

And you would be correct, if people drilled down into the data you'd see the birth rate drops off massively by 2nd/3rd gen when they hit the modern world.

It's the Amish and Mennonites that seem to retain people well by having it be optional.

America is more likely to be Amish than anything else if we got solely by the trend.

I'd say there is a lot more too it than that

Good old linear extrapolation

Yeah, if you're willing to make a cloister and isolate your children it might work. Not that many groups looking to live that way though.

> It's the Amish and Mennonites that seem to retain people well by having it be optional.

Both groups have many instances of rape happening that much of the wider world is not aware of, as they are cloistered societies, so, combined with the fact that many stay silent due to fear of retaliation, those are not the best examples to use.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48265703

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-...

I think that’s part and parcel of any similar project.

The trajectory of Christianity and Islam in France and other western European countries are diametrically opposed though.

For various reasons Muslim population in france grew form basically 0% to ~10% in 50 years, in the same time the number of baptisms was divided by 2

The vast majority of children of French Muslims aren't religious.

Is one of those "various reasons" that many of them are immigrants? I don't think you're going to see French-born Muslims behave the same way as their parents.

There’s not anything nearly as strong in the Bible. American Muslims are more affluent and highly educated than the average American, but also have significantly higher fertility rates (2.4 in 2017, versus 2.1 overall). Also, it’s not the “modern world.” The US fertility rate was above 3.0 the same decade we put a man on the moon.

What about:

> Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it Genesis 1:28

In Orthodox Judaism (from the Mishna/Talmud) this takes the status of a commandment to try to have kids.

Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.

Ps. 127:3-5

> American Muslims are more affluent and highly educated than the average American

Is this not just due to the immigrant effect, ie the only ones who can afford to immigrate (legally, at least) are those who are relatively rich (which correlates with high education levels) in their countries? It takes money to shore up a visa and buy a plane ticket, that most individuals in poorer countries would not be able to afford. American Hindus (including Indians), East Asians etc are also more affluent and highly educated than the average American, for the same reasons.

It is not necessarily "rich", but you're on the right track. During the 70s and 80s, US immigration policy basically filtered/let through mostly people who came here for college or higher education. That was the case for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh at least, I believe. So of course the South Asian population here skews successful and educated.

I am not sure what immigration policy was like for Arabs.

I'm saying that those who can even cross the seas are relatively richer than their peers in their home country. It is not just a function of a country opening immigration, the potential immigrant must first be able to afford to do so in the first place.

Maybe, I'm not sure; the trope of people coming here with pretty much nothing and being able to establish a life is a true one that plays out time and time again. My own grandfather came here from India with very little--literally few dollars to his name, had to live with someone he knew for a bit, ate "ketchup sandwiches" regularly, etc. So I think in his case he had the resource of a network, but not much financial resources.

And my dad came to the US for college from Pakistan, also with basically nothing--his family did not have much money.

But yes, I suppose there is literally the trip across the ocean that costs money.

How exactly did they come here? Who paid for their flight or ship voyage? That is the "relatively rich" I'm talking about. My parents (and I) also came here on not much money, but I can realize that having the ability to come to the country in the first place as well as secure a job cannot be understated.

Yes, I take your meaning :)

Well, this is not universal - my great grandfather came from undivided Punjab in the 1920s as a merchant sailor and I think had about seven kids in USA.

Oh that's cool man, what's the story there? Was he among the Sikhs who settled in farming communities in California and intermarried with the Chicano population?

No, he was an Ahmedi in Kapurthala whose ancestors were sweetsellers from Bareilly. He went to New York, then Detroit and then Pittsburgh.

Ah cool--pretty unique story!

How much of his religion and culture survived down to your generation of the family tree?

My parents were married in Rabwah in the eighties if that means anything to you but I think my branch is pretty much the only unassimilated one as far as my dad’s side goes (my mom is a Pakistani immigrant and my dad was the only one in his generation besides an uncle of his to marry “back home”)

I’m really sorry to say this, but sometimes the way that Pakistanis have treated me with my background, I regret learning Urdu and Punjabi sometimes. I have many wonderful Sunni relatives and Pakistani friends but why should I put any kids I might have through abuse like “han pato Qadiani” “yahudion ka chamcha” and “wajibul qatl” (the last of which another American born Pakistani sipping soda water kindly informed me in a bar my parents were the week after the ‘Muslim ban’) Like Bulleh Shah is cool and all but mostly I end up talking about that stuff with Sikhs for some reason.

My father and brother don’t speak the language, only my mom and I. In the 80s, my mom’s favorite author was the late Ishtiaq Ahmad, up until she encountered some of his interesting conspiracy theories about her community. In children’s novels!

They may be more affluent than Indians back home, but many start at the bottom of the ladder in America. Asians are actually the highest poverty rate group in NYC. But Asian income mobility from the bottom of the income distribution is about 2.5x the income mobility of white Americans.

Also don’t forget that many East Asians came here as laborers and railroad workers in the 1800s and early 20th century, and as refugees in the 1950s-1980s. Third generation California Chinese, or Vietnamese, are also more affluent than white Americans today, for reasons that have nothing to do with immigration of affluent individuals.

lots of things appear in the bible that have just sort of been dropped over centuries, I also think Christians as a group are more splintered than Muslims - but that may be my lack of knowledge on this front - I certainly believe fundamentalist Christians are into this thing but not sure what percentage of each set [Christian, Muslim] has this as a core tenet.

There is no Jewish or Christian denomination that rejects Genesis or Psalms.

1. that seems unlikely given the amount of denominations that call themselves 'Christian', unless your statement is tautological, but OK

2. explicit rejection is not quite the same as not following all things in common practice of the religion.

I know people classed as Christians who do not at any rate follow the whole be fruitful and multiply guidance.

1. You’re welcome to name one then. The Marcionites would qualify if that movement weren’t extinguished thousands of years ago. All modern Christian denominations more or less agree on points that were decided that early on in the history of Christianity.

2. Right, most people do not follow this in practice even if such commands appear in their religious scriptures. You might remember that the whole point of the comparison was my contention that we can expect something similar to happen with Muslims.

Ok back to point two - I agree that it appears in scripture, I made it sound like individuals don't follow the religion which is true, but also I believe there are denominations of Christianity that don't push it.

It is one thing to hear go do this constantly from the pulpit (hence my reference to fundamentalist Christianity which often does this) and decide as an individual not to go do it, it is another thing to never hear it pushed from the pulpit, read it in the book, and not care.

This goes back to my statement

> I certainly believe fundamentalist Christians are into this thing but not sure what percentage of each set [Christian, Muslim] has this as a core tenet.

by core tenet I do not mean something written in your text and agreed that this is an important part, but something that is hammered on all the time.

What does "is hammered on all the time" mean?

If a priest spends lots of time saying that people should go out and have children and find other Christians to marry to make a Christian nation I would consider that really hammering the issue.

IF they don't then that church doesn't care.

If pretty much none of the leaders of that denomination do so then I would say it is not a core tenet of the denomination.

So the question is if it is a core tenet of Muslim denominations? Which I don't know how many there are of that, I get the feeling they are in some ways much less fractured but perhaps in other ways it might be they are more fractured in belief systems than the large set of peoples normally called "Christian"

If however it is a core tenet then my belief is that core tenets do not change in a single generation, I would think several generations would need to happen before the religious leaders were not saying it all the time and the followers were thus not feeling obligated to follow. Sure in three generations I would expect alignment with other groups, by and large.

This belief of mine is however only a belief as I am not aware of any kind of large scale study in memetics or (perhaps to get away from a loaded term) idea transmission in multi-generational hierarchical organizations which is what a religion would be.

I am also willing to believe I am totally wrong here - for example if one found a religion that went from salvation by works to salvation by faith alone in one generation among a large Christian denomination then I would say - huh, I am definitely wrong and it means large scale hierarchical organizations / religions can be changed in one generation (although I would expect to see charismatic leadership involved now that I am considering the idea)

You're talking about the religion that gave the West monasticism.

You do realize that the denomination whose source you linked is considered by most Muslims to have a relationship to them like that of the Mormons to Christianity?

So is Christianity (and definitely demolitions like LDS). My dad has 6 siblings due to Catholicism which doesn’t really happen much in the USA anymore, but definitely still applies to the Latin America.

What was the previous generation's child mortality rate? From what I read, that seems to be the dominant factor for the number of children you're expected to get, not so much what religion one has.

Probably contraception availability also plays a role there, but I'd be surprised if the two don't go hand in hand: if you have money to spend on healthcare then you'll also have the money for cheap contraceptives.

Edit: another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37720354) linked to a video by the author of the book that I read the above claim in: https://youtu.be/2LyzBoHo5EI?t=962 (the conclusion is what I linked, about 1 minute of watch time)

After WW2? Mortality rates were pretty good. None of my dad’s siblings died in childhood. In Latin America, child mortality isn’t bad either. Catholics (at least back then, and many today outside of the USA, especially in the Philippines) do not believe in contraception.

At population level age of the woman at household formation predicts number of children. It's simple biology.

>Probably contraception availability also plays a role there, but I'd be surprised if the two don't go hand in hand: if you have money to spend on healthcare then you'll also have the money for cheap contraceptives.

Contraception is forbidden by the Catholic Church.

Yeah and we see what effect that is having in the christian 'western' countries

Practicing Catholics are one of the few growing demographics.

It applies to the poorer countries, but less and less so. The more developed countries in Latin America have a birth rate that is similar or in some cases lower than the USA (Uruguay) and are definitely more secular in their culture.

> Islam is especially potent on the fertility front because marriage and having children are considered a central moral obligation

I'm a Sunni Muslim who is fairly well-versed in the religion, and I can tell you it isn't an "obligation". Marriage is strongly encouraged, but usually without mention of children, though that's generally expected (probably more from a cultural angle). Islam is also generally (to my knowledge) accepting of contraception.

I have no doubt that American Muslims have more kids than the average American, but it's becoming increasingly common to see Muslim couples now with no kids (wasn't the case when I was a kid). Nobody thinks much of it.

(Above applies to Sunni Islam, can't speak for Shi'a denominations)

Many of my American friends don’t have kids now pushing 40. I know two Bangladeshis of the same age who have no kids (out of my entire extended family)—and even then they wouldn’t say out loud that was the plan. And my family is quite secular. My dad, who hasn’t stepped foot in a mosque in decades was freaking out when my brother turned 30 without kids.

By contrast, I feel like most American Christians wouldn’t react that negatively to someone in their family declaring they don’t want kids.

> My dad, who hasn’t stepped foot in a mosque in decades was freaking out when my brother turned 30 without kids.

Exactly, it's a cultural thing, not a religious one. See, for example, how a lot of Hindu Indian parents would react similarly.

There’s no clear distinction between religion and culture. Both my parents are antagonistic to organized religion (because secularism is a class marker in Bangladesh) but they don’t eat pork. Their moral axioms are rooted in Islam, even if they don’t recognize it as such.

The same is true for secular Americans. As an outsider, it’s quite obviously an outgrowth of mainline Protestant Christianity.

> There’s no clear distinction between religion and culture.

While too many religious people let their cultural and other beliefs/values contaminate their religious practice, it is still pretty simple to draw a line, and it's silly to try to infer something about a religious group based on the attitudes of your irreligious parents.

As a couple of us have pointed out, the same attitudes are exhibited by non-Muslim South Asians, so why are you still asserting their views reflect some vestige of their ancestral religion as opposed to the culture they come from?

I’m talking about the other direction: religion influencing people’s culture. Religion and culture are deeply intertwined in a bi-directional exchange.

Asia offers a good example of how religion makes a difference. The whole area has been the subject of extensive population control efforts. But the Muslim fertility rate in India is markedly higher than the Hindu rate. And the fertility rate for Indian Buddhists is much lower than either, and closer to East Asian countries with a strong Buddhist tradition.

>But the Muslim fertility rate in India is markedly higher than the Hindu rate.

Citation needed, they've been converging for a while now.

> By contrast, I feel like most American Christians wouldn’t react that negatively to someone in their family declaring they don’t want kids.

That depends on whom you ask, as those who are as culturally (or actually) religious as your Muslim friends and family would react the same way to someone in their family declaring they don't want kids. In other words, it is likely just you not realizing many American Christians' lived experience, as that is not your own lived experience. I see a similar phenomenon with my Indian family thinking that Americans are more cavalier and distant with their children and that Indians treat them better, when in reality they simply don't know the lives of many other Americans.

> I see a similar phenomenon with my Indian family thinking that Americans are more cavalier and distant with their children and that Indians treat them better

My Bangladeshi parents said something similar: “Americans don’t love their kids.” And while that characterization isn’t quite true, I’m married into an American family, and the stereotype does have a factual underpinning. That’s how the manifestations of individualism—particularly among WASPs—is perceived by south Asians.

> I'm a Sunni Muslim who is fairly well-versed in the religion, and I can tell you it isn't an "obligation". Marriage is strongly encouraged, but usually without mention of children, though that's generally expected (probably more from a cultural angle). Islam is also generally (to my knowledge) accepting of contraception.

Sunni Islam is very diverse. I am sure there are many millions of Muslims out there who would agree with everything you said. But there are other Sunnis who disagree. Here are some quotes from the Salafist website IslamQA:

"it is permissible to temporarily stop having children, with the aim of spacing pregnancies or stopping them for a specific length of time, if there is a legitimate shar‘i need for that, according to the view of both spouses with mutual consultation and agreement, on condition that this will not lead to any harm..." (my emphasis) [0]

"If the decision to delay having children is widespread, at the societal, national or ummah-wide level, then in this case it becomes a destructive and negative choice, and in that case the ruling is that it is not allowed, because it has moved from being a permissible and natural matter to one that is imposed from without and will lead to negative consequences, and is therefore blameworthy" (my emphasis) [1]

"...having children is a right of both spouses, and it is not permissible for one of them to refuse with no excuse or good reason" [1]

"If the motive for delaying having children, or ceasing to do so, is to follow the cultural norms of non-Muslims and imitate them blindly, out of admiration for their culture and infatuation with their way of life, then undoubtedly the ruling in this case is that it is not allowed" [1]

IslamQA does say "not one of the scholars said that it is obligatory for a couple to produce children" [1] - however, read in the context of the rest of what they say, that seems to mean that married couples who have no children due to infertility or difficult circumstances do not sin - not that a married couple being "childfree by choice" is acceptable in Salafi Islam.

My impression is that IslamQA's position on this is the standard Salafi position. If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.

[0] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/144543/ruling-on-delaying-ha...

[1] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/231777/is-contraception-hara...

To be frank, when I think of Sunni Islam, I tend to think of the four canonical schools and ignore Salafi nonsense. Their influence is disproportionate to their numbers, unfortunately. It's not abnormal for them to reach strange conclusions, but I am surprised to see them do so on this particular question.

In any event, Salafis do not constitute a majority of Sunni Muslims (by far), and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy. Nothing on websites like IslamQA binds anyone, and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine.

And as you note, even the "scholars" and other content creators on that site, try as they might, in the end must admit it is not obligatory.

> If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.

Leaving aside whether that's actually the case, this was not the original claim that was being disputed. The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc. It isn't.

> In any event, Salafis do not constitute a majority of Sunni Muslims (by far),

True, but they have a lot of influence. I'm not Muslim, but my uncle (by marriage) is. My uncle has never really been the mosque-going type, but his father was. I remember his father complaining that the Salafis had taken over his mosque, using all their Saudi money. And I don't think his experience was particularly atypical.

Also, I don't think this is unique to Salafism. [0] repeats basically the same point of view (contraception is permissible to delay having children, but not to prevent it entirely). That's not a Salafi website, that's a website aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood – the Brotherhood are not Salafi, they represent an Islamism which is more traditional in its scholarship than the Salafis are

[0] https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/contraception-permissible/

> and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy.

Whether that's true depends on how you define "clergy". Sunni imams or ulama are just as much "clergy" as Jewish Rabbis or Baptist ministers are. The claim that Sunni Islam lacks "clergy" relies on defining "clergy" in a narrow sense inspired by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and "high church" Protestantism, and ignoring the broader sense in which the term also gets applied to Judaism and "low church" Protestantism, among others.

> and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine

I'm Catholic–how many Catholics do you think follow the Catholic Church's teaching that most forms of contraception are prohibited? So I was never making the assumption you are assuming I'm making

> The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc

In a strict sense, you are right – all Sunni ulama agree that marriage and children are mustaḥabb (recommended/encouraged) not fard (obligatory). However, I think it is more complex than that for two reasons (a) in some Muslim subcultures, certain things which are officially just recommended/encouraged become de facto obligatory, not necessarily due to the letter of religious teachings, but due to social pressures which exist in those religious communities; (b) something which is only mustaḥabb in the general case can become fard in specific cases, and certainly you will find ulama who think that sometimes happens in the matter under discussion, and if the specific cases become broad enough, they can end up outweighing the general case in practice

It's not an obligation in the sense that it's not strictly mandatory.

But it is beyond encouraged. Any faithful Muslim believe that marriage is half of faith.

“When a person gets married he has completed half of his religion, so let him fear Allah with regard to the other half.”

https://islamqa.info/en/answers/11586/is-marriage-half-of-re...

It's strongly encouraged, yes. But not mandatory and not obligatory, which was the erroneous claim to which I was responding.

Are you Muslim? You realize people don't take "half of faith" literally, right?

Yes I'm Muslim. They do where I am. Calling marriage "completing half my faith" is a very common expression. Why wouldn't they take it literally?

I used that at my speech in my brother’s wedding, and the aunties loved it.

All religions and societies encourage marriage and multiplication. Any culture that does not will be short-lived. Natural selection is at play here.

Except western society, and particularly Anglosphere. Our culture prioritizes individual success over the family unit. It's actively increasing the costs and risk of family formation, and decreasing the number of children it's possible to have.

This is very recent (and obviously unsustainable with a negative birth rate).

Cf. the Shakers, who practiced celibacy — and, no surprise, have essentially died out.

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

Islam will not take over France.

This appears to be heavily downvoted but hard to argue against seeing how irreligious the second generation has been since the big influx of North African immigration started. Religion has not been very successful in France for a while now

The downvote button apparently means "j'aime pas les arabes".

No, of course not. Second-generation immigrants and later trend towards the culture of their host country. Third generation is indistinguishable from the rest of the population. This is universally seen...except for Jews, who have long memories of systematic oppression.

> or hassidic Jews or the population of Chad

Which, BTW, live close to the centre of Global Warming's bullseye.

We might need to add extra variables on such forecasts.

Those religious populations have always had high fertility, and also always had high rates of departure from the religious communities. I wouldn’t make any bets on their worldviews suddenly dominating the world anew

Conservative Judaism is essentially replacing liberal/secular Judaism in both the us and Israel while the population is still growing. So at least in the near term this is a real thing.

Religious populations out reproducing non religious is a real thing.

To be clear, there is a difference between "Conservative Judaism" and Hassidic Judaism.

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

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

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

I think the general point you're making probably still stands, but I think the distinction is more than merely pedantic.

Chad the country, or chad the Chad.

No joking, singing, or dancing allowed on HN.

Middle easterners and Muslims in general have a lot of kids.

Who exactly? Where? Can you show a correlation between the geography (where? from Iran and Egypt?) and birth rate? Religion and birth rate?

Vague, non-specific, evidence-free comments in highly sensitive areas lead to all sorts of bad stuff.

Both Egypt and Iran have relatively high birth rate. Especially when you consider the difficult geography they live in.

Yes, Egypt has a high fertility rate, 2.9. But Iran does not. It only has 1.6. For comparison, Japan has 1.26.

True. Rich and stable ME states (UAE, …) have very low birth rates. The ones that have undergone turmoil like Yemen have higher birthrates.

Saudi Arabia has a birthrate of around 2.5, and it's quite stable.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Their growth rate is more than Christianity and Hinduism combined.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/06/why-musli...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth

Great! I want to be clear: Good for anyone who is free to practice their chosen religion, whatever it is.

However, that's not really a correlation, which is important: For example, I'd guess that people who are Muslim (an incredibly large, diverse set of people) on average buy fewer winter coats than people who are Shinto. That tells us nothing about the religion of Islam, other than some geography.

Great if they are actually free to practice. Apostasy is a crime in many of these countries.

The problem with those high-fertility groups is that they usually come with a lot of baggage - specifically they require belief in the made-up nonsense that tends to fade away as the demographic shift advances. So, they may maintain higher fertility rates, but I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.

Which belief system is more absurd, one which the adherents maintain or gain in population, or one which they go extinct?

Which one is more fit to the environment?

If you have a point to make, feel free to make it.

All belief systems are equally absurd.

Some people just don't have the time to reexamine their values. If you want society to be efficient, you're going to have to have a belief system of some sort.

seems like a circular argument

Sounds like one of those "having no belief system is a still a belief system" type arguments...

To worship is part of being human.

If people don't find anything else worthy of worship, then they simply worship themselves.

"To worship is part of being human."

Proof for that? I don't deny is has been a big part of much of human existence over the millennia, but there's zero evidence it's a necessary part of our very being.

How would you design experiments to test its necessity?

Why would you need to? I've never worshipped anything in my life as far as I can tell, yet I'm pretty sure I'm a functioning human being.

It's not about need, it's about ambition, a trait often lauded here.

the proof is that spiritualism and religion have independently formed in every culture and every far flung corner on Earth. Easter Island had religion. Inuit had religion. Australian natives had religion. If humans ever settled on Antarctica they would have religion.

You get that in a Cracker Jack box or what?

It's not an argument at all. It's an inane series of leading questions intended to create the illusion of an argument.

>> I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.

In the west, increase in secularity has only affected the groups of people who would've been nominally religious (i.e. religious in name only). People who attend religious services on a weekly basis (a much better measure of religiosity) has stayed consistent. This is still a notable shift in religious demographic, just not the kind your portraying.

Further, outside the west, much of the world has kept or has increased their religiosity as they modernized. The belief that modernism produces secularism was abandoned by sociologists of religion some time ago after it was evidentially false (E.g. India is the most religious country in the world and still a modern state).

The fact you can't see value in religious systems adhered to by billions of people over thousands of years speaks less to those systems than your lack of understanding them.

> India is the most religious country in the world and still a modern state.

Have you been to India? It's a wonderful, fascinating place but it is emphatically not a modern, developed nation the way France or Japan is.

Much of the world not including China right? Even if we consider highly religious sub populations (and Uighurs have never been hardcore Muslims even during the Qing dynasty), the entire country is trending toward spiritual but non-religious, just like Japan. Much SEA is similar until maybe Indonesia and the Philippines. Buddhism is setup very much in the form of spiritualism rather than strict religious practice.

> In the west, increase in secularity has only affected the groups of people who would've been nominally religious (i.e. religious in name only). People who attend religious services on a weekly basis (a much better measure of religiosity) has stayed consistent.

False: It was 50% in the US 70 years ago. It's about 30% now. This is a decline of 20% in absolute terms, or a 40% decline in relative terms.

Weekly church attendance is under 15% in basically all of Western Europe -- https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religiou... (note that this show US attendance at 36%, but it's also comprised of data 6-15 years old).

It's probably lower than this-- research indicates that people overstate their church attendance in surveys; https://www.religion-online.org/article/did-you-really-go-to...

> The fact you can't see value in religious systems adhered to by billions of people over thousands of years speaks less to those systems than your lack of understanding them.

Plenty of things were done by huge fractions of the world population for thousands of years that deserve questioning. Authoritarianism; oppression of minorities and women; routine warfare with neighboring groups; belief in witch doctors; pooping near water wells, etc. This line of argument isn't a very good one.

> https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religiou...

10% of Germans claim to go to church every week? I've got friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country and of all age groups, and I don't know a single person who would even remotely qualify. That's at least a hundred people. Plugging that into the PMF of the binomial distribution gives me a likelihood so minuscule I should consider buying a lottery ticket. I call bullshit. That research is bunk.

Even the churches themselves claim their weekly attendance is only about 3,300k (catholic church, 2017[1]) + 770k (evangelical churches, 2019[2]) - that doesn't yet mean the same attendees every week.

I still don't trust these numbers, but that's already less than half the above research, making their self-reported attendance numbers essentially worthless.

[1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gottesdienste-laaaangweilig-1... [2] https://www.ekhn.de/aktuell/detailmagazin/news/studie-ueber-...

I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. If it's the former, note I said: "It's probably lower than this-- research indicates that people overstate their church attendance in surveys" and also pointed out the data is somewhat old.

> I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point.

My intent is neither. It's merely tangential.

That really says more about your social circle than anything else. Your assumption of statistical representativeness is (quite naturally) completely off. Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.. At least a couple of years back. It’s getting better though ;)

> Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.

Depending on which part of the pizza you take, it's not going to have any pepperoni. In other words, if you intentionally take a non-representative sample, unsurprisingly your sample is not going to be representative. I don't really see the point you're trying to make.

10% of Germans cannot be weekly churchgoers when there's at most ~4 million weekly attendees overall. It's obviously impossible. A number lower than 5%, preferably ~1-2%, I can easily square away with that number and my own, not intentionally cherry-picked, sample.

If I hadn’t gone to study in a reasonably sized city, my only social circle would have far beyond 10% weekly churchgoers (I’d guess roughly half).

My point is: you seem to have grown up in a very church-removed part of the country (if I had to guess either big city or east Germany). That is where your biased sample comes from. It’s most certainly not representative, and if you claim it to be just because you don’t sub select, then you are at best ignorant and at worst intentionally dishonest ;)

My family is from a rural area of Hesse (Waldeck-Frankenberg), spread over many small towns and villages. Very down-to-earth folk. Of course they're religious: lots of them go to church, but certainly not anywhere close to weekly. The vast majority will only go on major christian holidays, a smaller number occassionally when they make up their mind on a weekend. I don't doubt that if I asked, my relatives would however know some people who show up every sunday without fail. Same story for others I know in the former west: my Bavarian acquantainces, others in the south. I don't think there's a German state besides Bremen where I don't know someone.

Currently I live in Berlin - I don't think the situation in the northeast needs explaining.

Is your point that I must be wrong and that ~4 million weekly attendees in fact means 10% of Germans do attend church weekly? Cause if that's the kind of mathematics we're doing this conversation is pointless.

You started with

> I've got friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country and of all age groups, and I don't know a single person who would even remotely qualify. That's at least a hundred people.

that basis is what I objected to. I never made a claim to the actual numbers. There I'd tentatively agree with you, in that I'd suspect, that it is less than 10% of the population that goes to church on a weekly basis. But that's a "if you force me to pick" statement not something that I'd put high stakes in. Especially since the link that you reacted to is for data from 2008 to 2017. And... back in 2008 I'd not be surprised _at all_ if >10% would have gone to church weekly.. And yes we can quibble about whether missing church a couple of weeks per year should still allow yourself to count as "goes to church weekly" and whatever. I really don't care about the particular number. I care (or really was triggered momentarily and hit the reply button ;)) about your assertion that the 10% number _must_ be wrong, _because_ you yourself don't know "a single person that _remotely_ qualifies". (which given your place of origin I also doubt, but whatever)

I think the future of religion in the West – and eventually probably much of the rest of the world as well – is countercultural (ultra-)conservatives such as ultra-Orthodox Jews (Hasidim and Haredim), the Amish, conservative Roman Catholic groups such as traditionalists (SSPX/etc) and Opus Dei, Quiverfull Protestants, Salafist Muslims, etc.

Many of those groups (1) have high birth rates (large families starting at a young age), (2) have high retention rates (>80%, sometimes even >90%) generation after generation. There is no good reason to suppose that (1) or (2) are going to stop any time soon, and even they do for some of them, they are unlikely to do so for all.

I don't think we should expect these groups to follow the same secularising trajectory as mainstream religion. These groups have evolved a cultural immunity to the temptation of defecting to secular modernity which the religious mainstream failed to evolve.

India is modern?

France is modern. So is the USA, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and others.

But India?

“Indian exceptionalism” is a prevalent notion among the middle/upper class of India - i.e. the quality of life in India is comparable to other countries. You’ll hear it most from the people who have servants taking care of their household chores (but never the servants themselves). There are also common excuses thrown around like “it has only been 75 years since colonialism” and “the British stole everything”.

I was born in India, grew up in the US, and remember many visits back to the motherland where a relative would extol the virtues of “coming back”. I also remember getting sick all the time, abhorrent public restrooms, sitting in traffic for hours, etc.

Anyone from an actual modern country would agree with you on this, but many Indians living in India would not.

It's not hard to understand why repatriation is economically attractive. People who have worked in the West for a decade or two live like kings in India because their accumulated savings goes so far. This huge difference in purchasing power and labor cost is, of course, a characteristic of a developing nation.

The potential problem is: you've spent a big chunk of your adult life living in a developed nation, and despite your massively enhanced purchasing power, you are returning to a developing one, with all the concomitant physical discomforts and social ills.

But social ills are only a problem if you acknowledge them, and physical discomforts are largely solved with a money bubble, so... there we are.

Something doesn’t sit right though, no? You can’t fix horrendous pollution regardless of the amount of money you have and the differential of the modern/developing economies yields. You might have a bigger garden but the city won’t have a biking lane. You might be able to afford private health care but if you rely once on public care (ie: you get into an accident somewhere) then you are screwed.

It’s more expensive to live in a non-developed country than a developed one. Now a close to developed country might be an interesting choice since the prices are still low but the quality is fairly similar.

I feel like "social ills are only a problem if you acknowledge them", while not wrong, really downplays the differences.

Having spent more time of my life in more developed countries, I find that a lot of little behaviors that are normal back in India really grate on me which aren't as big of a thing in, say, the US.

Basic things like behavior on public transport, over in the US you can generally seem to rely on people standing to the sides of the door in a rough line until people have stepped off, while in India you have to push your way through the crowd trying to push its way in. It's hard to get used to those sorts of things, and many of them aren't meaningfully addressed by simply being wealthy (since similar behaviors carry over to, say, shopping).

Plus, it's even worse for women, who really can't "just" not acknowledge social ills in India as they can have a significant influence on their safety. As a man, I could do essentially whatever I want, party late, wear revealing clothes, get drunk etc. If my sister were to do the same things in India she'd be putting herself at immense risk.

I had this discussion with several Indians and I don’t get it. It’s not that India is just far from any modern country by any definition, they are also significantly far from developing countries and I’d say they are the worst Hindu/Buddhist country out there. Polluted, Over-crowded, Underfunded infrastructure, Unreliable services, etc.. Many neighboring countries have figured out this stuff even though they still don’t have the job market of modern countries.

They do seem to be improving on the infra. front. But compared to China, they are walking with a turtle’s speed.

Give me a break. The trend towards less religiosity in advanced societies is almost as hard and fast a rule as the demographic transition itself. The US has been a laggard, but recent surveys show a very, very fast decline in religious beliefs, profoundly so among the younger generations.

I would bet a good amount of money that there is a strong correlation between religiosity and lower socioeconomic status within India.

Everybody likes to imagine their woo is special, but it's not. As humanity slowly drags itself out of the nasty, brutish, and short natural way of things, we lose the need for primitive beliefs.

I think these religions and belief systems are adapting to a more sensible take, but I think the dogma demanding children will be scuttled. The humanist/Jesus/profit teachings will become rectified against human experience and philosophies of consciousness and drift toward core messages of peace and community while the dogma and rhetoric of pulpit interpretations of sin and judgement should subside.

I think the identity will remain but the substance will change.

There are some really cool discussions on YouTube about the definition of God and the nature of consciousness that are quite compelling and unifying.

Anyone who actually reads the New Testament closely will see that modern American evangelicalism is not especially closely related to what those texts actually say. (Obvious example: the texts don't claim "inerrancy" anywhere.)

It follows that Christianity evolved into its current form from the NT as its starting point.

Further evolutions and shifts should be expected (though some of them may look like explorations of very ancient paths not taken, like a drift away from inerrantist literalism and back towards things like Origen's opinion that the NT writers may well have made factual errors).

> The problem with those high-fertility groups is that they usually come with a lot of baggage - specifically they require belief in the made-up nonsense that tends to fade away as the demographic shift advances. So, they may maintain higher fertility rates, but I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.

Honestly... I've simply not seen this. There are many religious people in prominent positions, you just don't know about it. In my fairly traditional catholic parish, we have families where mom and dad are catholic, their five kids are catholic, and their 40 + grandchildren are as well (some are now adults and having kids of their own). And all successful, doctors, nurses, engineers, etc. The idea that religious == stupid or baggage or whatever is simply at odds with history. You're conflating the Duggars with otherwise normal people that just have different views.

You’ve responded to a quote which is largely stating that high fertility religious groups won’t spawn rigidly religious off spring by arguing with some anecdata that religious folks aren’t always stupid.

I think they're working with the premise that intellectuals are less likely to be as religious or more likely to think for themselves, leading to breaking off

"...you just don't know about it"

Oh, I see, ignore the data and instead believe in your hidden truth. Got it. Thanks for the help, all this time I've been going around making reasonable conclusions based on evidence, like an idiot.

Early life indoctrination is working and will keep working, especially with such an established institutions as world religions. Don't try to fool yourself.

How do you explain the fall of religion in places like Europe? It's not like early life indoctrination has been outlawed or even generally accepted as being wrong.

That's what I thought myself about after I posted the comment. Turns out it was a lack of faith in those whose job was to indoctrinate. Same happened in Soviet Union in 60s, and the very next generation became immune.

All the evidence points to the opposite. If you have some evidence or a series of logical statements, I will listen. But I'm not going to take your word for it when it directly contradicts all evidence.

Maybe you then care to bring your evidence?

A few recent surveys that show a significant, increasing and undeniable reduction in religiosity in the United States, particularly among the young people you claim are being successfully indoctrinated...

"In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace" https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decli...

"Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval" https://www.prri.org/research/religion-and-congregations-in-...

"U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time" https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

Those are not proofs of indoctrination infeasibility, just that in US religious indoctrination isn't working anymore. I believe it is mostly because schools and parents became more secular and unreligious. Same happened with ideological indoctrination in USSR 1980s.

On the other hand, left liberal indoctrination works fine in US right now, as we can see. Same with imperial indoctrination in today's Russia.

That is a decline in those specific religions, not in religiosity.

If you look at all religions ("a belief in something absent evidence"), religiosity hasn't moved an inch.

I think the influence of religion is people who are religious have lower expectations for life and think having kids is enough. Most secular people think they ought to be rich first and then have kids.

I've had similar thoughts, and I think that we're gearing up to see a showdown between the populations you describe and the populations that embrace things like embryo selection, artificial wombs, and vaccines.

What's going to be really interesting are the intersection between these two populations -- At some point some heavy breeding religious people are going to realize that as good as their heavy birthrate strategy is a heavy birthrate strategy combined with the technological advances I describe above is even better.

Imagine a near future where some ambitious and forward thinking Mennonites/Hutterites/Doukhobors/Amish are pumping out legions of productive, obedient and consistent workers in rural North America while urban and educated urban dwellers waste their time and economic opportunities away while being terminally online and outraged to the point that the economic and political balance of power shifts to these rural groups.

Sounds like a fun sci fi!

It's not (just) the actual carrying of the children that people are rejecting. It's parenthood. It's the idea of committing to someone unconditionally for at least 18 years, but really for their whole life.

Artificial wombs don't change this. Embryo selection doesn't change this. Vaccines will increase the chances that whatever children are produced survive to adulthood, but childhood mortality from vaccine-preventable illness isn't high enough to compensate for a worldview that doesn't want to have children.

If you believe you're part of something much more significant than yourself, dedicating your life to moving it forward by producing other people who will outlive you and do the same makes sense. But if you're all that matters? If your scorecard is measures in dollars or followers or something else that dies with you? You don't have kids even if you do have access to artificial wombs.

>But if you're all that matters? If your scorecard is measures in dollars or followers or something else that dies with you?

This sounds like a strawman. Many people don't want to have kids for different kinds of reasons (personal objectives, couple style of life, they don't like kids, etc). You seem to have a very low opinion of people that don't want to have kids and, on the other hand, a very high opinion of people that do have kids.

All those things you listed do sound like "you're all that matters" to me.

The personal objectives, the lifestyle, or the dislike of children, are all primarily self-referential. What do I want? How do I like living? Who do I want to be around? Those do all die with you.

People who prioritize any of those are highly unlikely to have children, regardless of the availability of artificial wombs.

I would certainly rather people be honest about the situation if they are at the center of their own reality. Better to admit that and not have children than bring children into it to try to fool people.

I don't even judge them for it. Our whole world is geared toward fostering that mentality. It would be hard not to be.

I'm just saying it doesn't lead to parenting a replacement number of children like believing you're contributing to something vastly greater than yourself does.

This all sounds quite a bit similar to a certain book about a Brave New World. I wonder if that is really where we're going in the future, but again, who would take care of all the new children growing out of their vats, if they are all artificially created with no set parents?

The people who aren't going to have kids in any circumstance don't matter.

The kind of thing that makes the Amish the fastest-growing Christian denomination in the U.S., some years, although they don't really make converts.

On the one hand, humans are absolute dogshit at predicting the future. I mean, the year 2100? Give me a fucking break. On the other hand, the demographic shift is as convincing and well-supported as any theory in all of social science.

I imagine advances in fertility technology will change the landscape of procreation in ways we cannot yet predict. It's also possible that major catastrophes could change population dynamics, not necessarily by mass deaths, but by driving some populations back along the demographic transition where having many children is once again the best strategy.

Also life extension technology. Thus far it has been largely ineffective but there's no reason to think it's insoluble.

Plus of course the "singularity" which, if real, could knock all predictions straight into the bin.

I agree, these predictions are usually just statistical inferences without any believable model. Models expect everything continuing like it is and not having any discontinuities.

I personally predict that we will fuck things up and end up with huge population decline because of raising fossil fuel costs, climate change, ecosystem destabilizaion and wars. Even feedin 8 billion people is a huge ask in this declining world.

What is the track record of demographers predicting 75 years into the future?

I guess these models assume that neither human cloning nor interstellar space travel will take off in this century. Models in 1923 probably didn't expect another world war, birth control, or the crazy levels of agriculture we see filling up our satellite pictures. How does one sanely account for such changes in these long-term models?

Once the birth rate for a particular year is set, you can’t exactly go back in time and change it. So you don’t need to be a trained demographer to see that we are on a crashing trajectory.

Beyond that, perhaps the models do assume that future birth rates don’t wildly depart from historical ranges. Seems a reasonable assumption to me.

But sure we could somehow get artificial wombs and an interest in using them, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Seems unlikely though.

Despite a several decades long decline in total fertility rate, most demographic models I have seen assume that lifetime fertility will magically bounce back to replacement level.

Underpants gnomes models. Bounce-back could happen, but there is no understanding in governments of why the decline is occurring, nor what it takes to reverse it,* so it is unlikely.

* Exhorting people to return to traditional family values, as the new PM of Italy does, is likely to crash fertility faster.

Full human cloning won't take off because it's too unethical - not because of lack of technological capabilities.

Why is it unethical (if we are good enough to avoid genetic abnormalities/mistakes)?

Really?!?!

I think anyone who wants to clone themselves is too full of shit to allowed to be cloned.

Why? We allow people to have children, why can't they have clones? We can still grant these clones all the normal human rights.

It gets into "playing god" territory without many justifiable reasons to do it. Who is responsible for a child born as a clone? What is the purpose of cloning them instead of encouraging people to have children the normal way?

Things like artificial wombs would be getting into similar territory, but unlike cloning they have justified ethical medical uses such as enabling women who can't carry a child in their own womb for any reason to still have a child.

We play god all the time, and I'm glad for it. Little about human habitat is natural, it's all reshaped to our need by us. In terms of responsibility, it can be the same as normal children -- either they are assigned parents or they are wards of the state. They should have same rights as other people.

The point about playing god isn't about it being unnatural, but that you're touching against some fundamental things about being human and our limited understanding of the limits of things something of a similar intelligence level should be subjected to.

Responsibility was just one example of the ethical quandries that arise with cloning thrown into the mix, why should we create cloned children when the state already can't do good by orphaned children? How do inheritance rights play out? What do we make of things like DNA tests as meaningful evidence in criminal cases? Who gets to have themselves cloned, and how do you prevent misuse of the technology? Is it misuse to say, store the DNA of the best soldiers, best athletes etc so as to create clones to meet demand in those areas? And if that isn't the intention for cloning, why do cloning at all instead of something like artificial wombs?

Is it worth the suffering of all the imperfect clones (and the surrogate mothers within whom they'd be grown) that will inevitably be produced during the development of the technology? How do we deal with reproductive rights of clones and their impact on genetic diversity?

Children who are raised in the foster system will typically have a harder time than those who have families which can provide financial backing, so unless the clone is raised by a family as their own child, we'd effectively be creating a subservient class by cloning, since while with normal children, losing their family is not necessarily known ahead of time, with a clone that isn't the case.

As it stands, we aren't even mature enough to have a proper conversation about the much less dangerous ethics of creating rudimentary "intelligences" in the form of current generation AI. How are we, as a society, supposed to then have a proper conversation about the ethics of creating full human intelligences? With normal children we can at least point to a biological imperative.

These all seem very solvable. Also, when I say “cloned” I mean also a broader set of technologies, such as artificial wombs and genetic designer babies. If desired all couples should have the ability to create children in artificial wombs and have them be exact clones or some designed mixes. These mixes/clones can contain their own dna or that of others.

In general, I think genetic sequences should be open source and if we get a ton of Einsteins, Michael Jordans, etc then we’re better for it.

> why should we create cloned children when the state already can't do good by orphaned children

Same as why we have children at all, some people want to have children that are their own.

> unless the clone is raised by a family as their own child, we'd effectively be creating a subservient class by cloning, since while with normal children, losing their family is not necessarily known ahead of time, with a clone that isn't the case.

I absolutely agree that all children should be when possible with parents and clones/design babies need to be given the same care/rights/support as normal children.

> Is it worth the suffering of all the imperfect clones (and the surrogate mothers within whom they'd be grown) that will inevitably be produced during the development of the technology?

We develop it not on humans first. We then use it to design babies for parents with genetic abnormalities.

> How do we deal with reproductive rights of clones and their impact on genetic diversity?

We grant them all rights. I think there will naturally be enough diversity, and monoculture scare is less meaningful when we can breed new generations with proper adaptations. Essentially we can get almost all benefits of having a diverse genetic pool (and I do think we should financially incentivize diversity).

> How are we, as a society, supposed to then have a proper conversation about the ethics of creating full human intelligences? With normal children we can at least point to a biological imperative.

I don’t think there is any difference between normal children, cloned children, and designed children.

I didn't expect you'd actually reply to everything! :)

But yes, if by cloning you're referring to just the broad set of technologies involved like artificial wombs, rather than specifically the technology to grow an exact copy of an existing human, I agree that the ethical problems are a lot more solvable and the tech a lot more justifiable as it would be compensating for medical issues.

As for developing it with animals first, of course we would do that, but at some point it has to be tested on humans, which still involves the same risks since developmentally we are fairly different from most animals, especially when it comes to the brain.

I do think exact cloning may be what a lot of folk would choose for. If you are single and plan to remain so then having a clone of yourself, perhaps a somewhat prettier/sportier/smarter one is what people will elect.

Overall, I think society is moving towards increased atomization of family units, which may go down all the way to the individual. Ultimately, we can unbundle (1) sexual intimacy (2) friendship (3) procreation. And I think in this world procreation will likely be artificial womb with a clone of self + a few improvements.

> development […]

Honestly I suspect artificial womb to be the harder problem than genetic manipulation/cloning. As full genome sequencing becomes cheap you can fully sequence every candidate embryo and ensure it’s clean. We don’t need high yield of quality embryos if we can filter out all the genetically bad ones with essentially 100% accuracy.

It depends a bit on what the clone is made for.

If someone just wants a child identical to some other human for esthetic reasons, the ethics seem mostly ok. The biggest ethical concern here would be obtaining true consent from the person being cloned, probably.

But the typical interests in creating a clone are related to exploitation of the clone without regard to their own desires. Simple organ harvesting is a popular reason to desire a clone. More indirect forms of exploitation are also thought about, like a company creating a clone of, say, Elvis Presley to sell his image, or someone creating a clone of a dead/aging lover as an ultimate form of child grooming.

I don't personally see anything wrong with modifying a zygote's genetic code to create a body without a brain and then harvesting it for organs. Much more moral than meat farming, even.

"Six is having problems adjusting to his clone status (...) All day long we hear him crying so loud 'I just wanna be myself! I just wanna be myself'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1h38gC23bw

> ...or someone creating a clone of a dead/aging lover as an ultimate form of child grooming.

Or the somehow worse sounding prospect of someone doing this with a clone of someone who was not their lover, say Elvis.

I think the simplest desire for cloning is propagation of one's own genetic code. I strongly believe that these clones should be accorded all the privileges and rights of normal humans.

It’s also unnecessary, there are tons of kids to adopt that people don’t. Secular society just doesn’t want enough kids to sustain itself.

adopting children doesn't allow oneself the vanity of reproducing the greatest genes ever known to history -- their own.

and I say this not as a jest, but as a mere point that the two markets (adoption/cloning) may not overlap.

That makes no sense. Human history is littered with unethical acts.

You could use the same argument for the two World Wars in the 20th century.

Wars don't just appear out of thin air. There were a lot of incentives for countries to engage in war. Cloning doesn't really benefit anyone and doing cloning requires a ton of funding and grants and ethics boards reviews. If you're interested in the history of human cloning (and where that field of research is trending towards), I'd recommend watching this video [1]. Full human cloning is somewhat pointless however the research has lead to innovations in stem cell research which does have real benefits for things like organ transplants.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ett_8wLJ87U

How exactly would human cloning affect world population to any significant level? You still need someone to be pregnant for about nine months to give birth to a clone, why does it matter if they give birth to a clone or a normal child?

Or do you mean human "printing", some machine that can carry a pregnancy instead of a human doing it? I don't think there is even a glimmer of such technology on the horizon. Then again, you seem to also think that there is some imaginable chance that we'll discover interstellar travel in the next 75 years, so maybe that doesn't stop you?

well you're in for suprise!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1

now while this isn't nearly at the level of human cloning, it never ceases to amaze me how far we've come.

Artificial wombs don't reduce the period of bring a child to be be a functioning social being (currently 18 - 28 years). Nor the costs or other incentives or disincentives.

To me, the most likely consequence is to reduce the total fertility rate to one child per woman.

This is far from even hinting at an artificial womb. It is at best a replacement for an infant ventilator and incubator. In the best case, it will improve survival rates for fetuses that even today sometimes survive.

But the first 20 or so weeks, from conception up to viability, are an entirely different prospect and we have no idea how we could replicate them yet.

i understand where you're coming from but like any other ecosystem, we'll need a bunch of puzzle pieces and this just happens to be one of them :)

I believe this particular piece is like claiming that the ancient Egyptians being happy that they are closer to building space rockets, now that they understand how to build an aerodynamic tip for an arrow. It is a piece of the puzzle, but it is very far from the part that is extremely hard to do.

It is indeed quite a stretch to see how this could affect world population in the next few years, but I have read about people going through crazier developments over the course of a lifetime.

One example scenario would require some narcissistic billionaire women to start producing their personal cloning machines. Production could go up to, say, an extra one of them (except for the billionaire part) each year. If that catches on, in a similar fashion to plastic surgery, we could see global fertility rates revert to Catholic levels. It also helps to think in terms of identical twins, triplets, and beyond.

Having a lot of children is now mostly limited by raising of said kids to require a lot of effort and money. It does not seem like a stretch to assume that robots could lend a hand here, at least on the 75 year horizon.

Could be like blade runner where you make adults and just inject childhood memories inside their brains.

Wikipedia has some insight into this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

My impression is that demographers have thought we would plateau around 9 or so billion.

Maybe this isnt fair but we had demographers hired by our school district who could not reliably predict student population 2 years out. I watched them fail for 15 years.

It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

I would imagine they were only looking at past trends of the school district population - but the reality is the most information would be USPS address changes, data that various companies like Zillow have, and new building permits.

The whole goal of science is the ability to make predictions, however small they are, about the future. Maybe with an uncertainty range.

Failed in what sense? Completely off, or close enough (like weather forecasting)?

Is it possible a school district couldn't afford the best services? Or that their goal wasn't necessarily the population number but rather an analyst of the causative forces and directional trends?

Excellent points, since school funding is student count dependent it was critical for it to be close. They mostly predicted increases but year after year it was flat or when decreasing. Maybe politics were involved, and like I said my comment probably isnt fair.

Yeah, "failing" for 15 years is a pretty good indication that those demographers are actually succeeding at what their employer wants... :)

someone in the system is probably paying for data that shows growth to protect their interests (eg coverying up insolvency of teacher pensions or justifying municipal debt/bonds)

In many fields it's easier to predict the aggregate of the whole system than the quantity of any specific component. Weather, thermal behavior, and also population.

Some things are also just not predictable, like human behavior

If you go a level up from demography to biology, you'll see a very clear message that population might plateau, but then it will start going up again.

Just saying something and hoping it’s true doesn’t make it true

Economic issues combine with demographics for school enrollment predictions, because houses become unaffordable for families pushing them out of the school district as the multi bedroom houses fill up with retirees.

Is the implication here that if they can't get that right, they wouldn't be able to predict world population either? If so, how do you know this is an issue with demography and not just being the ones your school hired not being particularly good?

Yup they might have not been good but they kept getting hired. In my mind I am thinking if they cant reliably predict a popualtion of around 5000, his could they predict the world. I get that they are apples and oranges.

I guess I just I wouldn't expect a local school district to be paying very much for a service like that, so I wouldn't expect that the results of who they hired would represent the best of the field.

Sounds suspiciously like climate change deniers who think it's clever to point out we can't exactly predict tomorrow's temperature.

My unfair comment is probably more like "The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data".

Sounds like you are a hammer and see nails everywhere.

I would politely suggest your school district got ripped off.

I am sure they were not getting their moneys worth.

From a demographic perspective I think it is safe to say that human population is not exactly on the brink of extinction.

I think there is ample buffer for future generations to correct the population trajectory if under-population happens to be a non-imaginary issue for our species.

In my opinion, many ecological problems would be simpler to solve with half or a quarter of the current population.

And the imbalance between old and young would only last for a few decades.

Our entire global economic order is built on top of infinite-growth, and the young outnumbering the old.

Negative slope population will lead to mass economic instability and eventually war.

Even in a post industrial economy?

Economic instability, yes, that seems inevitable as people adjust to new realities. But what would be the trigger for war if there are fewer and fewer of us wanting access to land/natural resources? Sure, access to manmade resources (and other services) will become an issue but it won't be much of a war if it's the older/less fit members of society fighting against the rest for their share...

The trigger for war is variability of the rate of decline among different countries with different ideologies and different outgroups.

A USA with 70 million people would feel very threatened by an Iraq with 300 million, for example. Just as Russia feels very threatened by Europe now.

The USA already has less than a 3rd of the population of India or China, but I don't think feels seriously threatened by either (in terms of a likely direct attack).

Our economy isn't based on the population increasing.

I fail to see what the ecological problem actually is given that the land factor (economic term, hope I translated correctly) and discoveries of new ways to use resources are dynamic factors.

It is really difficult to make predictions x years ahead of most topics, the further the harder when you take into account the dynamism of these factors and the innovations (discoveries on how to use new materials, for example, that replace old ones, etc.)

Population is simply the most potent factor in everything our species is doing, less people = less energy use, less farming, less fishing, less waste, less everything.

> I fail to see what the ecological problem actually is

It's as you said:

> It is really difficult to make predictions x years ahead of [things like] innovations

Humans already use more resources than they regenerate (the definition of unsustainable). Currently, most of the world population lives in relative poverty compared to the people in places like Germany, USA, Japan, etc. It would be fair to have everyone live at this standard, but that costs even more resources, making it even less sustainable! We can hardly prevent other countries from wanting to innovate, so it will happen, and our problem will get worse if we do not gain better technology (and/or reduce our consumption of animal products, learn to stop heating offices across weekends, etc. It works on both the supply and demand side of resources).

Precisely because it is hard to predict whether future innovations will materialize soon enough to fix those problems in a way that we do not reduce everyone's living standards, we cannot rely on the innovations happening and being deployed earth-wide in time

> Humans already use more resources than they regenerate

Even if this was true, recycling can exist. Also, other materials can replace older ones. Given these, I am not sure what the right strategy would be, unless it is really urgent and justified (I always hear a lot of generic alarms but no concrete facts that something is going to happen AND it happens). Take into account that, especially for developing countries, resources and cheap energy are critical for development.

No matter how much effort a spanish does, for example, in the reduction of CO2 (given the models are correct and that it is humans who warm up The Earth, something I am not convinced of at all), we are around 0.8% of total emissions. On the other hand, preventing China from burning coal was (last time I checked) making 400 million people back into poverty.

Do you see the problem? The problem could be ecological to some extent. But... are we controlling investment vs return? Are models true? For me it is impossible and I think there has been a strong bias towards exaggerating because there is a lot of money in the middle, independently of the truth.

That is my current view. They have been announcing the apocalypse since the 90s: everything flooded, global warming (that they conveniently changed to "climate change")... a lot of weird stuff.

A highly politicized area of discussion and a huge business for some.

How do you tell young families (women in particular) to have more children to avoid population collapse? This is a very real problem in a number of wealthy countries. I am not aware of government policies that have managed to coerce educated women to be wanting to have more (or any) children.

To be clear, I don't think this is the business of governments and nobody should be coerced to have or not to have children.

I believe that in case of population collapse, the solution will naturally appear to large enough number of people, evolution shaped us to reproduce, I don't think this instinct is likely to disappear, even if we might not fully understand it and why girls and women tend to have less children in some conditions (it happened before, in antiquity, and was considered to be a problem by Roman politicians, many of the current traditions around marriages were first created as laws...)

Evolution wasn’t aware of birth control.

> the solution will naturally appear to large enough number of people, evolution shaped us to reproduce.

The solution evolution found was to make us really like having sex. But then we invented hormonal birth control, and sex became uncoupled from reproduction. Evolution can't help us here, it works slowly over thousands of years, and can't uninvent birth control.

> it works slowly over thousands of years

This isn't always the case; evolution can happen relatively quickly in response to rapid changes in the environment [1]. There are plenty of people alive today who have particularly strong urges to have children, and the widespread introduction of birth control creates a major selective pressure towards any heritable genes that produce or enhance those urges. The effects of this could be very significant over even a relatively small number of generations.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

People will just start really like the idea of having children and will consciously do so

It absolutely is the business of governments. Unavoidably so.

Housing policy, tax policy, education policy, healthcare policy, family law - governments are influencing population massively.

Is it a real problem in some countries? I’ve only seen articles about negative economic impacts and nothing like “Japan will have zero humans by 2200”.

Economic problems are real and worth addressing and I hope we can find ways other than “we need more babies”.

You don't tell them to have lots of babies. You stop stigmatizing large families, stop glorifying small families.

$10k baby bonus and $5k towards childcare a year. Other incentives like this. Build better suburbs (more like walkable small towns)

In the Seattle area 5k towards childcare will get you about 1.5 to 2 months of childcare.

Look at Japan, Korea, Italy to get an idea of what is to come.

It’s not pretty. All of our infrastructure was build in constant growth. That mean that we cannot pay to maintain it, we wont have the people to do the job, we can’t keep our standart of care for the elderly.

With the transition to clean energly, information technology, we can keep on increase the population no problem, we keep on being more efficient and cleaner each year.

Yes, I think it’s a catastrophe, but we will understand a generation too late.

Maybe AI and robotic will fill the gap

Do you have an actual figure in mind when you write "With the transition to clean energy"? The reality is much much more bleak, you're looking at a very small chunk of total energy consumption that's using renewable, coal has only been going up and up the past years, and how sustainable the new renewables (non hydro) will be in a world not propped-up by cheap fossil fuels remains to be tested. I was hoping Bloomberg would call a spade a spade and acknowledge a guess of the real humans-carrying capacity of spaceship earth once it stops running on fumes... My guess: one tenth of our current peak.

There are reasons to be hopeful : https://patrickcollison.com/solar

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/our-climate-change-debates-are...

We will replace most fossil fuels with solar. Will it be in time? Maybe not, but it’s not hopeless.

Our planet was 20 degrees warmer overall that last time the CO2 levels were over 420ppm. And the level of rise over the recent past is totally unprecedented. Climate zones are moving tens of miles per decade north, far faster than forests can adapt. Things are going to get very crazy and the hunan population won't just decline gradually.

Noahpinion's self-admitted optimism bias towards solar and batteries is unhelpful hopium. (and drive-by downvoting is copium, Noah! :P)

Look into Tony Seba work. The transition is on an expodential path, most prediction are simple linear. Solar + wind + batteries are going to displace almost everything in the next 10 years.

Nuclear power is the most significant opportunity for clean energy. If we implement it fully, as e.g. France has, I don’t see a reason we can’t achieve abundant clean energy.

Interesting that France's nuclear failure is still brought as argument for the opposite?

You're going to have to be more specific as to what you call a failure... Closing the Fessenheim plant even though it was in perfect condition, safe, and very useful, just for base politician reasons... is this maybe what you mean? If you count the MWh/€, the excellent safety records, it's hard to see the failure. Maybe the slow production of an EPR reactor, the giving up on efforts towards 4th-gen reactors?

They might be referring to the fact that France had to import electrical power from Germany last year (which was made with coal and natural gas), because the rivers they used to cool their reactors didn't carry enough water anymore due to a drought.

I am sorry you are not very well informed. The reason France had to import was an extreme abundance of caution: one corrosion case on a safety circuit, not even the main circuit, leading to complete stop and overhaul of all plants having the same design. There are plenty of chemical plants with less paranoia...

Ah, ok, if it that's simple.. only that one tiny bit, not half a dozen reactors showing fatigue and early cracks in primary containment vessels where we can just lower the margins on paper and be safe again.. :)

Look, that's what I got:

https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featuredealing-with-cra...

What source do you have?

Basically everything you can find easily by googling.. so hat, their failed maintenance outages failed, their failed (or just too expensive) planning for their future capacities (too much in time and money) and the general concept not being fit for the future on many other aspects.

oh we can and do have the people power, no one wants to pay what it actually costs now to do them. It's not a lack of people, its a lack of money going to the right places, especially on the maintenance aspects. Ai ain't gonna fix that part, the one hope you do mention is robotics for augementing human strength for care of the eldery but again, money isn't going to the right places, its just filling up the accounts of the already rich and just staying there now.

as an example the landlord of the place i'm at right now spends hundreds a month of a leaking faucet but won't spend anything to fix it or update the shower that its happening in, they take in over $8000/month on 3 units they illegally split it into that they bought in 2003 for $362,000 and is now valued at $1.3 million, yet it still has lead pipes and leaking faucets. There is lots of money for upkeep on every project, the gov and ownership class doesn't want to pay it until forced to.

It’s called extraction capitalism

Just suck every last dollar of value out of every asset.

Broken down, debt encumbered assets will be someone else’s problem, especially since bankruptcy can’t reach in to the pockets of the owners only the corps and LLCs that have stood as the facade for extraction

"hundreds of dollars a month of a leaking faucet"

exaggerate much ?

It's hard to take (even valid) criticism seriously if couched in hyperbolic speech like that.

And yes, the landlords have probably no incentive to repair. They probably rent out as is as long as they can, then evict everyone and rebuild/remodel.

Maybe you could sue.

So, some math:

$362K invested in 2003 would now be $1.25M, so this landlord would have been a lot better putting the money into an index fund. When you consider the amount of real estate taxes, insurance, and maintenance, which probably today runs at about $35K a year, if you account for a measly 1% per year for maintenance, this was not a good investment, though some of the relative loss is made up in the form of tax breaks.

If the landlord did not buy this place, that would leave you or anyone else unable to live in this place unless you purchased it yourself and then became a landlord to others, essentially at a loss relative to putting your money in an index fund.

$100K a year rent for this place barely covers the interest you would earn on $1.3M, plus taxes, maintenance and insurance, so there is no positive cash flow here.

The solution is to pay the landord what it actually costs to properly maintain the units, which means raising your rent.

Yes, no one wants to pay people what they "should" be payed, just like no one wants to pay rent in the amount that needs to be paid to allow the place to be maintained properly.

At some point, a balance is found, and things are given up to achieve that balance.

In the US at least, we'll have plenty of other much more serious problems before we have to worry about infrastructure. There was a story on here just the other day about record levels of homelessness for baby boomers. Our housing market was built for growth and rents are probably not going down much any time soon. The elderly have found themselves with houses too large to care for, and they're often well into disrepair by the time it's feasible to downsize. Financial companies have been preying on this same population with predatory financial instruments like reverse mortgages. Lots of folks who were among the first to get 401ks instead of pensions are realizing they have far too little saved to maintain anything even close to their pre-retirement lifestyle.

Our society has optimized itself for profit around the historically financially well-off baby boomer generation and not their welfare or comfort. Sadly this absolutely won't be a problem that's solved for at least a generation or two. Until then it'll be very painful times for many people.

Japan is not on fire, and their GDP and population growth has been stagnant a long time. They have an aging population, but they won't live forever. Fertility rate could be trivially boosted through policy measures and we aren't seeing those, because they don't care.

> Fertility rate could be trivially boosted through policy measures and we aren't seeing those, because they don't care.

Totally false. It can be argued that they're not doing enough, but they are definitely trying.

December 14, 2022: "The Japanese government is planning to provide an additional 80,000 yen (€556, $592) to couples who have a child as Tokyo looks for ways to halt the alarming decline in the nation's birth rate."[1]

January 24, 2023: "Japan’s prime minister issued a dire warning about the country’s population crisis on Monday, saying it was “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions” due to the falling birth rate.

...The government has launched various initiatives to address the population decline over the past few decades, including new policies to enhance child care services and improve housing facilities for families with children. Some rural towns have even begun paying couples who live there to have children."[2]

June 1, 2023: "Japan is investing around 3.5 trillion yen in a push to increase the number of children. The country's acute population problem is getting worse quicker than expected.

Parents will be entitled to a monthly allowance will of some 15,000 yen —about $107 dollars — for each child from newborn to two years old. There will then be 10,000 yen for children from the age of three and older, with the coverage expanded to include children in senior high school.

The government also plans to open up nursery school or day-care center places to children, even if their parents do not have jobs.

It will raise childcare leave benefits, starting in the fiscal year 2025, so disposable family incomes remain unchanged for up to four weeks even when both parents take leave.

The measures also include increasing paid parental leave and providing subsidies for fertility treatments. "[3]

[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/will-japans-new-plan-to-boost-birth-ra...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/23/asia/japan-kishida-birth-rate...

[3]: https://www.dw.com/en/japan-to-channel-billions-of-dollars-i...

Fair enough, but the low hanging fruit I see is not a lack of money, but a lack of time. The expectations placed on workers, on top of raising a family, is ridiculous, but they won't budge. For all alarmist rhetoric, the government certainly isn't behaving as though it's an emergency.

To be fair those numbers are tiny. The NPV to society of a new baby is probably more like $500k. I would guess if we paid $500k for a baby it would be quite effective

Even if instead of NPV they simply paid lost wages/opportunity cost then it would be something. In Japan there is a lot of discrimination against young women because of fear they will go on maternity leave/not stick around. As a result, women don’t get promoted/hired, and if they do get pregnant are minimally accommodated. If we want to encourage women having children we need to compensate all the negative consequences they face in the workplace, and that’s tens of thousands of dollar per year.

The problem with that approach is a simple $500k payment does not result in a productive adult. It takes years and years of hard work and sacrifice to end up with the type of adults you want.

You will get the people you least want to be parents pumping out kids for $500k.

I don’t think this is a problem solvable with cash.

From what I understand the problem is discrimination in the workplace that young women, and especially mothers, suffer.

If a woman sees children as a block to her personal success then a little bit of money (and it is a little, compared to lost wages) won’t help.

Have you seen evidence that less discrimination at work leads to higher fertility?

Here's one paper about Poland; "These data reveal that discriminatory practices by employers against pregnant women and women with small children are decisive in women’s decisions to postpone or forego childbearing."

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26349356

And yet there is still widespread discrimination against immigrants. If Japan is consumed by this crisis, it will be by their own stubbornness

>discrimination against immigrants

... aka not being demographically suicidal.

Their current track is not demographically suicidal?

I think you mean favouring their own ethnicity (which is fantastically narrowly defined, socially, in Japan. If one of your grandparents was Korean and the other three Japanese, you're mostly treated as Not A Real Japanese Person by Japanese who know. Which affects promotion prospects, for a start.)

"Favouring your own ethnicity" has a simpler name...

I think you're suggesting racist, but they seem to be more xenophobic.

$500 plus $100 a month is basically nothing

Many countries have tried to boost it, so far nothing seem to work.

It’s a cultural thing and once it shift it doesn’t come back easily.

You would have to convince modern woman to stay at home and have 3+ child and you need most of them to do so.

Without return to traditional values that is not going to happen.

I'd confidently venture to guess the only times throughout history this is arrested is when either a Patriarchal foreign group conquers, or when a Patriarchal ideological minority gains influence with their population increases.

There isn't a good way to boost fertility that I know of. The Nordics with very generous maternity leave and social safety net have a lower fertility rate than the USA.

Keeping a populace dumb and uneducated works pretty well.

On the other side of the coin a society without children allows its members the freedom to be obese and mentally ill.

I don't think fertility rate is something good or bad, I think people are very conservative (beyond its political sympathy) because change opens for uncertainty. It does not matter if it is about drugs, fertility, AI or diversity. Ergo, in many societies we live thinking that we are always progressing towards positive outcomes when the long term reality is more random.

.cz has been increasing births by tweaks to public policy/spend.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CZE/czechia/fertility-...

A TLD has been increasing birth rates?!? Surprising!

By allowing more than one children? What a generous State.

Both parents have to work, if you want to increase birth rates then you can't force everyone to be a dual income family.

You'll notice that all the high birth rates are with single income family structures.

In Sweden you get 480 days of parental leave and heavily subsidized daycare. Both parents can have jobs without issues

So a year and a half. Every large family I know ( and I know very many, very large families) are single income or the mom works at the school.

He didn't even make a point, just gave us a fact about their social support programs.

Clearly paternal leave doesn't fix the core problem since it's been there, and grown, over the entire time the birth rate has fallen.

It doesn't even make sense to do it unless both parents have exceptional careers, and most people just have mundane jobs.

Not good enough. It is not for daycare and The State to raise your children while you're echoing poetically down the halls of Coincidence Inc...

Reduce taxes. All countries with high fiscal pressure have a low birth rate. Maybe the correlation is there. Someone out there might not want to look because his whole structure (bureaucracy) depends on the status quo.

> All of our infrastructure was build in constant growth. That mean that we cannot pay to maintain it

Not really. For example both the US and California run on insanely large yearly budgets and base economies. What neither have are priorities that would consider infrastructure to be critical. Not for maintenance and sure as hell not for investment. Both have plenty of legacy money sinks, and hangups, and hobby projects (some mindblowingly large), and bad habits (like road resurfacing that comes riddled with defects and needs redoing on a yearly basis - in the most boring weather). There is a lot of money. There seems to be no incentives for spending on boring solid infrastructure.

US and California have run on immigration since their respective beginnings. Budgets don’t matter if there’s no one who can do the actual work.

There are plenty of companies on the planet who know how to build solid roads. And I doubt they would refuse to bid on California road projects - including training and importing their own workforce if it came to that. They are used to building through the middle of nowhere. But yeah, it's up to California (for example) to refuse to consider such solutions.

> we can’t keep our standart of care for the elderly.

Seems obvious. If you go from 10% of your population being elderly to 50% - you either need to spend a ton more or quality is going down.

Or automation and increased productivity fill the gap, as they have always done.

I’d file that under “quality is going down”.

Are you imagining machines delivering canned food or something?

Medical advances too - drugs and procedures that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago are commonplace along elderly populations now, a trend that will no doubt continue. Attitudes and regulations around euthanasia will inevitably change too. Personally I'm not worried my final years are going to be of significantly diminished quality of life compared to what my own parents have experienced. I might not be so sure of that if I lived in a country like South Korea or Italy, mind you.

It's not going to happen in a day. We can go from 10% to 12%.

It happened already over 30 years, and in most countries should plateau in less than 10 years.

You went from about 200 years of an industrial world where <5% of the population was elderly to - in the span of 30 years - that going up to the mid 30s to low 40s in almost all developed countries.

Japan & Italy led the charge.

> All of our infrastructure was build in constant growth.

And the demand for that infrastructure also comes from growth. It's not the landmass that needs roads and schools.

At some point the population will level off. Either it'll be by choice, or due to some resource limit. The voluntary option seems strongly preferable, as it doesn't involve vast numbers of people starving.

Stable or declining population is not intrinsically a problem. For example, many environmental issues just go away if there are substantially fewer people.

The problem is that we currently have a system built on the assumptions of growing population and growing GDP and 1) it's not clear how to adapt and 2) most people have their head in the sand. Conventional (neo-liberal) economics hasn't exactly been an outstanding success so there is no reason to continue to follow that model, but our political processes are very myopic so it's hard to get the long term planning needed to change.

In effect our modern economy has determined children cost a lot despite the fact that they are a benefit to the country as a whole (is that wrong?). Do you want to take some portion of your wages to perpetuate humanity? And given the condition of our society (I speak as an USian) why bother paying to have children, providing child care and instilling an education? I can't fault people for saying no thanks - or one child is enough - to that "bargain".

The choice to have children is usually not an economic consideration. I think there are more fundamental and higher purposes involved.

> The choice to have children is usually not an economic consideration.

This is obviously the nicer sounding position but I wonder if it's the true one.

Raising a child- especially in the early years when they’re completely helpless- takes way, way more money and time and effort than the lords of capitalism who make the rules around such things realize. They don’t know, because they they have nannies and unlimited money, so they can’t really understand why people want more time off work and cheaper childcare options.

On another note, why is it impossible to find part time professional work? 40 hours is way, way too much when you’re raising kids but unless I want to work at Wendy’s I have no choice but to knuckle under and just bear the weight of basically working 100 hour weeks (if you count taking care of kids as also being work of a sort).

Atlas should have been portrayed as a single mom.

> despite the fact that they are a benefit to the country as a whole (is that wrong?).

Not in moderation. But I don't think that it would be helpful for most countries to have more people in them than they already do, let alone the earth as a whole. We could distribute better (allow people from inhospitable places to choose to live and work somewhere else if they want to) as well as slowly and carefully bring the number of people down so we don't need 5 earths to have everyone live at today's rich-country standards. I'm sure we can still have billions of people, especially with advancements we'll have made by the time that we'd get close to reducing the current number by so much as a few percent, but for the time being: more is not the solution. What made you think that?

I think the government should support its people by providing no cost healthcare, no cost child care, no cost university for most people qualified, and so on. And I think that children are, on a personal & national level, beneficial. I further suspect that people who have a personal genetic investment in the future will make more sound decisions than if they do not. And even if we had these programs I doubt North America will be overpopulated nor would the birthrate even exceed replacement.

I'm not sure international migration is even an alternative. They already can immigrate to numerous countries but most don't. The idea (for example) many Nigeriens would choose to live here is really absurdly arrogant. If they could have a life in Niger half as comfortable as a life here most would prefer that. Most people are not prone to migrate unless pressured by economics, chaos or discrimination. Most people don't want to live in a strange ultra-capitalist society like the US. Of course we also have no obligation to help them develop their own country but I much prefer that course to whisking away their people to make up deficits caused by our state providing so little to the people we already have.

Hans Rosling argued this very convincingly more than 10 years ago:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

It's very surprising how little we know as to why people don't get kids, since almost every single common idea is wrong to some degree.

* We don't get a baby boom after a war (any country whove been to war)

* not from good housing (japan and Singapore have really good housing)

* not from conservative traditionalist religious society (most of eastern Europe and Russia).

The exception is extreme impoverishment and religious society, both if which are not sustainable.

It's why the baby boom of the 1940s should be studied like no tomorrow, since it's the exception to the rule in almost every country.

For instance in Sweden the biggest reason to not get kids is that people don't feel ready or haven't experienced the world enough.

At this point I just don't know what can be done beyond growing babies in labs and pay huge sums to incentive people to donate sperm/eggs.

Look at it the other way, do we know why people do want kids? When I ask people here (and I think I'm considered rude for doing so), I get many different answers, none of which really satisfy me. It seems to be like religion; something I'm not capable of believing in.

My grandmothers both participated in the baby boom, yet one said she never really wanted children, it was just something that everyone did back then. The other grandmother never said much at all but always seemed very unhappy until she died a fairly early death from cancer that she opted not to fight. Actually I do remember her saying that she should have stopped after one child (my aunts and uncles had very problematic lives; a trait I seem to share).

It's a weird thing being descended from people who seemed indifferent at best to the whole concept of reproduction.

That's indirectly what I think too we ought to look for, personally I believe forming a family is and always will be a form of investment, maybe not an investment of wealth in this day and age, but a investment of a social group.

In some sense I think we've lost a lot of that interest and instead tried a more individual approach to rationalizing forming a family.

And also the old family structure we used to have, has not been able to adapt to the standard that the modern world and challenges demand of us.

I read something recently that found the majority of the reduction in people having kids is due to getting married later. I.e. if we assume married couples have a fixed probability per year to have children, and unmarried people rarely have kids, then increasing the average age of marriage from 30 to 35 approximately halves the birthrate (because after 40 women generally cannot have children).

It wouldn't surprise me, at the same time your 20-30s is the "age of discovery" it's really as you say in your 40s you tend to want to maybe settle down or cool down a bit.

Similar to how we see record many women freezing down their eggs.

Wait, weren't we supposed to worry about overpopulation, resource starvation and ultimately societal collapse and massive death toll from the planet not being able to support it?

Now I learn the scientists also predict the drastic decline, and the plateau. All the scenarios are united by the conclusion that whatever happens, we are all doomed. It's nice to know something remains constant.

I’ve recently had the revelation that belief in evolution seems to be negatively correlated with one’s replacement rate. Let that sink in.

Does this enable you to hate people more efficiently, or...?

I think he's alluding to 'Idiocracy'.

I prefer to call it "understanding of evolution". Not critiquing your comment, just adding a viewpoint.

"Belief" is a right to be asserted bluntly. People feel socially comfortable saying they "believe" in all kinds of non-evidence based conjectures.

But ask someone whether they "understand" evolution, and they are likely to give the question more thought.

An unapologetic "no" has a bit of self-inflicted Socratic burn to it.

One can understand something and not believe it is true. I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid. They just don't believe that earth is that shape.

> I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid

This isn’t understanding the concept of a spherical planet. The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica. Someone can understand the physical possibility of a sphere without grasping the fuller concept.

> The radial symmetry of gravity, for instance, is critical to understanding why penguins aren’t constantly falling off Antarctica.

I don't understand how your point challenges the notion that people can understand something while not believing it. A flat earther can understand how gravity protects penguins on a sphere, but not believe that it is relevant to the flat disk they inhabit.

Fair enough, I wasn’t disputing the general assertion. Just the narrow point that flat earthers tend to understand the model they’re dismissing. In my experience, they do not. A spherical earth isn’t simply implausible, it’s impossible to them.

> One can understand something and not believe it is true

Of course.

"Belief" is subjective. It requires no fact or reasoning, and is independent of "understanding", so can correlate with it or not.

> I'm sure flat earthers understand the concept of a sphere or more specifically a oblate spheroid.

Your example isn't quite what I was talking about. A rational person can understand and believe in a relationship between spinning and oblate spheres, without logically concluding that the Earth is a sphere, spinning or oblate.

Relevant "understanding" questions would be, do they understand General Relativity? The Higgs field? The Coriolis Effect? Gravitational density maps? The topology of airport locations and travel times, the topology and latencies across the internet, land, sea and orbital, the ring of geocentric satellites? Etc.

Understanding any of those things, means understanding: why large masses pull themselves into (spinning oblate) spheres, that Coriolis torque is a measurement of speeds varying across latitude, or that travel and communications map to a sphere, or that anyone can directly view an unbroken circle of satellites directly above the unbroken ring of the equator, etc.

All without getting mired in someone's unilaterally subjective "beliefs".

Do you understand the flying spaghetti monster?

It's the most common way of saying it, maybe because the alternative explanations need to be believed.

Don't forget there's a difference between what people say they believe and what they actually believe. Do you really think the average Christian believes in heaven and the word of Christ? If they truly believed it I don't know how they'd sleep at night. Or perhaps they are all addicted to a lifestyle they believe will send them to hell for all eternity? Either way, what people say and how they behave often reflect wildly different beliefs. I tend to believe what they believe is reflected in their actions, not their words.

Never watched Idiocracy?

> Software Engineer. Chicago -> San Francisco -> Breckenridge, CO

Look at that bio lol. He’s seen it.

Or as Alex Kaschuta put it, "the fruitful shall inherit the earth". Is your demographic having kids? More kids than your opponents? Does your ideology depend entirely on converting the children of your enemies in order to continue existing?

Orthodox Jews, Conservative Christians, the Amish, all seem to have organically developed a memetic defense (at least partially) against the demographic nihilism of postmodernity. I think developing these memeplexes will be an important decider wrt what ideology looks like in in the next few centuries

What is there to "sink in?" That natural selection seems to disfavor "belief in evolution?"

I see this sort of statement sometimes, and I really haven't figured out what it means. I can point to exactly zero consequences in my life for either believing in evolution or not at any given point. The time scales evolution requires are simply too long to matter to even the next thousand generations of my family, and evolution is simply too flexible to exclude other worldviews (e.g. theism).

Are you suggesting a status thing, i.e. belief in scientific theories is high status and skepticism/alternative worldviews are low status?

How about survival of the fittest and the people believing it being the least ... well, fit in the reproductional sense?

If the population stops growing wont that crash the economy and fabric of society as well? (as long as we define an economy to be healthy as long as it grows, something that will eventually stop)

States with social welfare and universal education and healthcare, require there to be X number of people working for every person that needs resources from the state, or who work for the state.

Plus all the regular spending police, firefighteres, military, courts, the state itself (politicians, bureaucrats, tax collectors), garbage collection, and so on and so on. If that pyramid becomes two parallel lines that is not going to work well. If the pyramid starts inverting, we would be in deep trouble.

So, is this good or is this bad? I thought for years, the argument was that "peak child" is the reason we would not reach a malthusian overpopulation dystopia. I get that people and societies cannot envision a world without infinite growth, but the other end of that was coming against natural limits of resource consumption. Which is it? Was Malthus right or will we naturally reach peak child and that's also bad? Both out-comes are bad?

You cannot believe both, otherwise, you need to explicitly say what that secret third thing of a perspective is.

I was interested in historical demographic predictions. What did the UN project for 2020 in 1950, 1960, 1970 etc.

Unfortunately pre-1950 demographic prediction is a little harder to find. I wonder why*

Anyway a reliable source is found here: https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections

In summary historical population projections have been pretty accurate but not in the way you expect.

*One thought is that because current date may become a historical inflection point similar to the first half of the 20th century, current date demographic statistics may be too important to put much stock in. Sobering.

That's a great resource, thanks.

It's what I expected, what the UN predicts follows the agenda of the day. Previous it was the fear of some enemy population and now they are trying to normalise the idea of population reduction.

indeed the prediction and agenda go hand-in-hand

it could not be otherwise else the agenda would alter the prediction until the new prediction and the new agenda match

interestingly this operation is the same as an agentic ai

and no one wants to show a visual of these models apparently

because afaik population collapse is an exponential process, and the economy undergoes shrinkages and reoptimizations on the way down that have knock on effects in the same neighborhood that controls population

collapse is not a controlled process, most boom and bust cycles throughout history look rapid when viewed over the backdrop of 1000 years, based on the historical precedents i'm familiar with there's a higher chance of this being the back end of a roller coaster if people don't obsess over having kids as much as people obsess over climate change

A thought experiment for those without children approaching having one from a rational perspective. What is the value of your closest personal relationship; your mom, your spouse, your pet etc? Let's say you have a choice, for that relationship to have never existed, meaning all memories (good and bad), and everything you've gained (and lost) from that relationship would be erased unless you paid a price. How much money and time would you sacrifice for that relationship to still exist?

This misses the point that gaining a relationship and keeping a relationship are not at all the same. It also misses the possibility of having a bad relationship, and while a bad parent-child relationship is usually on the parent, it isn't always. It's also one of the few (possibly the only) relationship that you can't really bail out of no matter how bad it gets.

Case in point, you ask what the value of peoples close relationships are, but for some people those relationships you mentioned: mom, spouse, pet, actually have negative value.

Close relationships can having negative value and it's apart of the question (see parenthesis). Gaining and keeping a relationship are not the same but also not particularly relevant here since the purpose is to quantify the value of close relationships when making a rational decision. Parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, etc relationships have very different value but if you've never had a child, then your estimations of value can only come from your own relationships or asking other parents.

Wrt to bailing on your child, many single moms and dads will tell you that's a thing, not a noble thing but it obviously happens. Also consider marriage, in the US divorce rates are around 40% and can cost more than half of your total assets, which is often far more than the cost of raising a child. In terms of expected value (depending on your income), more risky to get married than to have a child.

(1) Going Extinct: In the US and likely in all the developed countries, on average the number of children per woman is less than 2. Soooo, in those countries we are going extinct. Or, the population is shrinking. Right, this simple fact is made more complicated by mass immigration.

But, still, we have the lesson: In a developed country without lots of immigration, population is shrinking. Eventually the immigration will slow and then the population will start shrinking again.

(2) Cities. The economies in developed countries are heavily about just their cities.

(3) Land. The cities have a big problem: They are short on land and have no way to make more. So, house prices increase. Paying workers more will not create more land but will likely increase house prices.

Currently, in large US cities, house prices, that is, owner occupied, single family shelter, are too high for doing well at family formation, e.g., wife a full-time mother.

E.g., Dad got a Master's, got married, got a job teaching in high school, bought a house, and started a family. So, I guessed that I should get an education, get married, buy a house, start a family. So, I got a Ph.D. in applied math, got good at computing, got married, was never able to get the down payment or qualify for a mortgage, buy a house, or start a family.

Due to the pressures, visiting at her family farm, my wife, brilliant, astoundingly hard worker, PBK, Summa Cum Laude, Ph.D., killed herself.

So, she never had any children, and neither have I. I'm still hoping to be able to buy a house but so far still never have. So, in the case of my wife and I, due to the high costs of a house, we didn't have any children and contributed to population shrinking.

(4) More Land. Away from the larger cities, the US has lots of land, without buildings, not very good for farming, not very expensive. This cheap land has not solved the problem of houses being too expensive for family formation because (a) the jobs are in the cities and (b) that cheap land is too far from such a job to commute from a house on the cheap land.

E.g., trying to make money enough for family formation, I was working at FedEx. My wife was still in our apartment in Maryland working on her Ph.D.

With some computing and applied math, twice I'd saved the company from going out of business. A crucial investor on the BoD told me

"Just keep doing what you are doing until someone tells you to stop."

Looking back, I was in effect reporting to the BoD and the CEO. So, in the work, I was doing very well.

My official management kept trying to fire me (such is illustrated well in the movie Godzilla). And the promised stock was 18 months late. I had mostly been working in Memphis -- my office was next to the CEO's (who put up with my late night violin practice of the Bach Chaconne).

As it was, I didn't see a reasonably feasible path from the FedEx job to family formation. So, maybe I needed more education and applied to graduate school. I was accepted at Princeton, Brown, Cornell, and a fourth, and decided to go to the fourth for an applied math Ph.D. I submitted my letter of resignation from FedEx. On my last day, the CEO called me to his office and said:

"You know, if you stay, you are in line for $500,000 of FedEx stock?"

No, I didn't "know" that.

The first time I'd saved FedEx was with some software I wrote from my apartment in Maryland -- the output from the software resolved a crucial issue for the BoD -- that's why in effect partly I was reporting to the BoD.

Some days before my resignation I'd outlined a project that promised to save FedEx $millions a year in operating costs, and the CEO had written a memo making that MY project (implicitly reporting only to the CEO), and I planned to do the work also from my apartment in Maryland. But there on the last day, the CEO said I'd have to work in Memphis.

Since the promised stock was already 18 months late and since the $500,000 was not written down or solid, I didn't trust the promise of the $500,000. And without FedEx stock, I didn't see a reasonably feasible path to family formation working at FedEx.

For more, my best computing, a consultant I wanted to use, my apartment and wife were all in Maryland. I'd proven I could do good work, save the company, working in Maryland. So, since the CEO said I'd have to work in Memphis, I left FedEx and got the Ph.D.

(5) New Solution: (a) Still have a job in a big city. (b) Have a house, nice yard, maybe a small lake or a stream with a walking bridge over the stream, own water well, septic tank, and drain field, use wood for some of the winter heat. (c) Work from home and interact with the job via the Internet. (d) Occasionally drive into the office in the city but skip this on snow days!

(6) Population Growth. With this solution, we can do well with family formation, and the population can grow again.

I can't believe IBM didn't take care of you when you were working at Watson.

Net, I lost money working at IBM. Cost of living, especially from commuting about 100 miles a day, was just too darned high.

I've interacted with you occasionally over the years here, and had read parts of your story, but had never known about your wife. Thanks for sharing some context. I wish you the best in achieving your goals, and applaud you for being able to keep going forward despite tragedy.

People lose track of time having fun or career building.

Globally available birth control is just a new selective pressure that humans are beginning to adapt to. Assuming ASI doesn’t erase the human species, humans will be back to expanding towards Malthusian limits within a few generations, rebounding from the coming population plateau / decline.

Now?

Hans Rosling was talking about this over a decade ago.

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...

Peter Zeihan has been a trumpet for this kind of information for some time now; worth watching if you're into this sort of thing. (Or want to poke holes in it.)

The geographic, social, religious, ... distributions of demographic declines and increases will be the interesting thing to watch.

I don't think people should worry about it like it's an upcoming disaster, but we should question whether lifestyle choices that do not include or make it significantly less likely to have children are robbing us of important aspects the lifecycle and living a full life.

A much-repeated finding in surveys is that childless adults are happier than parents.

Keep telling yourself that. Kids can be not just ok, not just good, not just great, but the best thing to happen to you in your life.

The studies you refer to regard subjective happiness at particularly difficult child rearing years.

Anecdata from older childless people, the emptiness of childless life once you’re beyond young adulthood is sobering and incredibly sad.

But yeah hold onto those studies that make you feel ok.

Having children is a lot like religion: I have many friends with children and they're nice people and there is no issue, but there is a certain subset of the population that spends their entire life telling me how I'm an awful person making a huge mistake for not [having children/being religious] and they are utterly insufferable and not worth associating with.

I hear you. But I will also tell you that until you have children of your own, it is difficult to appreciate the value they bring.

They are work and require sacrifice but it can be an investment that pays huge dividends for the rest of your life.

You’re not a bad person if you don’t want children. I think most people with children trying to convince you to have some are well-meaning and just don’t want childless people to miss out.

My advice would be: if even a small part of you thinks you want children, just do it. You will grow to take on the new responsibility. But do it no later than age 40.

Having children changes you right quick. It's not just that you have to change therefore you do. No, it's that it just changes you. A 20 year old dad can be much more mature than a 40 year old bachelor, but there's no reason to think that the 20 year old dad will have less fun than the 40 year old bachelor.

There are tangos (and I'm sure country western, and other songs) that are all about the protagonist having had all these ladies as a young man, but never a woman, or how they left behind the one woman who was their soul mate just to get laid with lots of others. E.g., Ansiedad, by Juan D'Arienzo[0][1].

Here's Nick Freitas talking about getting married at 19[2]. Be sure to read some of the comments.

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoHGmN9GTPM
  [1] https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Juan-D-Arienzo/Ansiedad/traduccion/ingles
  [2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/u_q8-UNk4TU

.....and there are plenty of stories of people who got married way too early before they learned who they are and were miserable and got divorced. There are plenty of kids with horror stories of growing up in those loveless households.

Right.

But if you’re mature enough to debate the pros and cons of having children, you hopefully won’t be a bad parent if you do choose have kids.

When a couple of 20 year olds decides to have children, they're almost certainly not mature enough, but it can and should work out.

Why are they most certainly not mature enough. Having children in the 20s or has been the standard for essentially all of human history until the last 30 years, give or take. What is it about modern society that makes human beings less fit for parenthood than every previous generation?

Yes, I'm aware. It's taking a chance. Now if the two kids (for, if they are 19, 20, 21, 22, ... they are kids) have had a good education from their parents and relatives and friends, and hopefully also if those people are around and willing to help them, then they should be able to work through difficulties.

Why before 40? Do the kids turn into gremlins if I'm older?

There are many well-known challenges to conceiving and having a successful pregnancy if the man and especially the woman are near/over than 40.

Really there's often difficulty past 30.

Your 20s are the prime years for reproduction, biologically.

> My advice would be: if even a small part of you thinks you want children, just do it.

Uhh this sounds like terrible advice--kids aren't cars that can be returned or sold if it turns out the "small part" was incorrect.

If this is your view of having children, I would suggest you wait.

They are not a pet or a piece of personal property. Caring for a child is the biggest responsibility of your life and it will likely not go according to plan. If you’re unable to grow to meet the demands, then it may be best to wait.

Caring for a pet should be for the pet's life as well, and it offends my moral sensibilities to put pets in a category alongside personal property.

I think you misunderstand me though--and I'm not sure how, to be frank, I think what I was saying was pretty clear from the context:

Precisely because it's such a huge responsibility, etc., the person to whom I was replying was giving bad advice. They were (basically) suggesting having a kid even if one is unsure about whether one wants to.

edit: oh you're the poster to whom I was replying. Above, you said:

> My advice would be: if even a small part of you thinks you want children, just do it. You will grow to take on the new responsibility.

Now you're turning around and saying "oh no, it's a grave responsibility that shouldn't be taken lightly, don't do it if you're not ready".

On the other hand, not having kids is also a lot like a religion now. I want kids and have many friends who do not and they’re nice people and there is no issue, but there is a certain subset of the population that spends their entire life telling me how I'm an awful person making a huge mistake for wanting children and they are utterly insufferable and not worth associating with.

This is the dominant perspective on the social media that younger generations spend their time on. I’d argue that as a person in their mid 20s today, actually wanting kids is the bizarre position. I often feel alienated for openly stating it among good friends of mine.

Given how personally you've taken that off-hand comment, I'm more inclined to believe the OP than your reply.

I would rather look at the data than at the tone of the comment.

The person they were replying to referred to studies; the person you replied to essentially said they love their children and that childless people find emptyness towards the end.

I believe both, and both can be true at the same time, especially considering that I've also heard of studies which showed that people tend to diminish past negative experiences. The parent will view the here and now, with happy children that are doing well, and see that all is good and hard work paid off. The childless person may have fewer people around them in later years, but which has a greater sum of total happiness? Being able to do for fifty years whatever your heart desires, or some happy end where someone sees you go and has a lot of pain from that? (I guess the latter might be partially my bias talking, but I truly am trying to view this objectively, like how one can explain both the study and the subjective experience from the person you replied to.)

"Can"

well, if we are going the anecdata route i am 70 and childless and reasonably happy. i suspect i am not alone.

I’m 66, and never had kids. Never wanted them. Thinking back now, about what my life would be had I had kids with either of my first two mates, seems like a nightmare. I frankly love my life now.

> I frankly love my life now.

What's it like?

Seeing children today makes me feel a deep sense of despair. Watching them pushed as hard as possible into schoolwork and extracurriculars from elementary age so that they might have some shot at a decent life; it feels like watching them being fed into a meat grinder (one that I myself went through and would not wish on anyone). And I didn't have to grow up watching the trees die as my local climate changes from a humid sub-tropic coastal plain into a desert; I couldn't imagine being a child looking ahead at decades of climate change - hell, I'm not that old and so it terrifies me as well.

I agree that a world without children sounds sad, but with the way things are going, a world with them seems sadder to me.

My father was born into a world in which he had to practice subsistence farming if he didn't go to school. His was the first generation for which school was an option, and as a child he traveled 20 km by foot to the school and back, daily. My grandfather lost both parents since childhood, as back then hospitals were places where people went to die. He later fought in WW2, and lost his land to communists. During those years, he also witnessed the soviet-induced famine.

We are literally living humanity’s best years. Children today basically get sad for not having enough time to play Roblox. How sad is it that they have schoolwork to do instead of subsistence farming? And we get sad over climate change while stuffing our faces with cheap and delicious food while the AC is on.

I’d say the very definition of depression (and trust me, I’m quite the authority on it) is stuffing your face full of cheap carbs while you never leave your house for fear of heatstroke. Sure gives you time to ponder the meaninglessness of it all though, so if that’s your thing, then the world may indeed be headed in your favorite direction. Just ignore the ever rising levels of depression/anxiety/suicide in teens.

People dying from the elements is at an all time low!

As a teenager, my grandfather lost a set of teeth due to the winter's cold, by sleeping in a cold barn, and he described it as a near-death experience. If anything, for many regions of the world, the weather getting hotter may be a relief for the poor that don't have heating in the winter.

We have zero reasons to be more depressed than prior generations. If we are depressed, don't you think the constant fear porn from mass-media has more to do with it?

PS: it's not just the carbs that are cheaper and more available. It's everything, including meat. Staples of any healthy vegan diet, like green peas, or lentils, weren't even available until ~1960, after industrial agriculture caught on. Never mind the availability of fresh fruits year-round. My grandparents basically lived on a diet of polenta, potatoes, milk, and eggs, as that's what they were able to grow.

People are dying from heat stroke at higher rates than ever in my state. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/30/texas-heat-wave-deat...

I didn't have to read about it on the news; I lived it. The heat this year was soul-crushing and we're not that far into the 21st century. Do you think countries with lower rates of depression do not have mass media?

Again, people dying from the elements is at an all time low, and this is a fact: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters

Indeed, the number of people dying from extreme heat is going up, but that number was small to begin with. And you know what the solution will be? To install some air conditioning, much like how we survive winter by having indoor heating, and maybe to adjust our work schedule a little.

"Soul crushing", no offence, but JFC.

>no offence, but JFC.

Is there any world in which this trivializing response to someone expressing serious dismay is not deeply offensive?

I have a houseful of giggling, happy teens right now. The ones that are supposed to be suffering so awfully according to some. They aren’t. They have struggles and fears I know of, and many I don’t I’m sure. They are just as pragmatic about them as any generation between now and Plato (and longer) has been.

Don’t believe what you read, and perhaps don’t judge anyone at their worst moments. Don’t stereotype based on the vocal and visible few.

I’m describing my own childhood and life. Not everyone was a happy, giggling teen. Some of us have lived with an existential fear of death (could never believe the happy stories of an afterlife that I was told) from a young age.

Here’s a story written yesterday about a child who is already experiencing this in kindergarten.

https://www.thecut.com/2023/09/do-kids-need-ambition.html

You may think that because you have not suffered, no one else does, but I assure you that is not correct.

Take care.

I can’t begin to know your experience. The fact is that I live with an unyielding fear of people. So even as I’m grateful for the joy in the house right now I’m deeply uncomfortable, bordering on panic.

Im grateful that I can see the fear is unfounded but that doesn’t make it less real. That knowledge extends to knowing the fear is only impactful on others if I let it manifest in my actions. It always will, but insomuch as I choose my actions it doesn’t have to make much mark on the world.

Reading that now it feels a little awful but I absolutely don’t mean it so. I hope you can find peace for yourself.

You sound suspiciously emotional about it.

What age group are they comparing? I would bet later in life the parents are on average happier as the kids become adults.

Who cares for the childless?

Retirement communities and nursing homes are full of parents with children who do not visit them. How selfish does one must be to have children to have a retirement plan? Society cares for the childless, and we will have to learn to manage a declining population because of a population expansion everyone thought (how silly in a finite system) would last forever.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-qua... ("One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent")

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12898 ("Parent–adult child estrangement in the United States by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality")

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-23124345 ("New China law says children 'must visit parents'")

"Society cares for the childless" - across lots of different cultures, and for a lot of human history, that is/was not the case.

Sure, that's how free will works, both individually and collectively. Sometimes people go without or die alone (even if they have children or society has the means and infrastructure), and that is an unfortunate reality of the human experience. Hopefully we do better but there are no guarantees. Welcome to the shit show, enjoy the ride.

Bingo.

Also, self-reported happiness surveys are BS.

I’ve been to Scandinavia. They are definitely NOT among the happiest people in the world. They simply think they should say they are happy.

I have six kids. During the earlier years of their upbringing, it was very difficult. I'm not surprised surveys would reflect this. But now that they are old enough to be mostly autonomous, I realize it has been the most rewarding experience I think this life has to offer. I often wondered if I had made a mistake by choosing to have kids. Now I am immensely grateful that I stuck with it. I realize it's not for everyone, but I'd like to see such surveys at more advanced ages. I'm willing to bet the findings would be flipped.

But why is happiness later better than happiness now?

So it only matters how you feel about it at the end?

IMO the journey is more important than the end.

I’m just asking open ended questions here. I don’t have any answers.

> But why is happiness later better than happiness now?

Here are a few more to ponder:

- Why does the squirrel bury nuts in the warmer months instead of eating them right away?

- Why save money instead of spending every paycheck?

- Why not spend every day gaming, drinking and smoking?

True, however there's no guarantee that children will take care of you later, many such cases where it doesn't happen. But still, I get your point about hedonism, the Greeks thought about this often.

I think the long-term satisfaction of having happy, healthy adult children is a little deeper than how well they take care of you in old age.

For some people, not for all. What if your kids hate you or you hate them? More common than people think.

In America’s cruel and highly individualistic society, while I wouldn’t say it’s the majority, it’s certainly a sizable percentage of people that hate their children or their parents. I think a lot of it stems from the lack of safety nets, for profit healthcare, etc where having children results in increasing the financial burden on oneself. While all countries experience population declines as they become more developed, I think the association between that and the animosity people have toward children (and as a result, eventually, people have toward their parents) is much more variable. The US is one of the few wealthy countries where having a family can cause you to lose your job, be forced into medical debt, have to pay ridiculous child care and educational costs. The undoubtedly breeds resentment toward children and in some cases much worse behavior. During my own childhood, things weren’t even as egregious as they are now in terms of the ratio of wages to the cost of basic needs (food, housing, healthcare) and this was already obvious. I remember people behaving abusively to their children in grocery store lines and invoking how much was being spent on them, my friends being sent to school sick because their parents couldn’t afford to miss work, and myriad other signs of this. I can’t imagine what it’s like in 2023.

I am okay with this outcome. Better than no children at all.

You do you. For me, no children at all is the better outcome.

People don't necessarily have children in order to be taken care of later. People have children because that's what people do, reproduction being one of life's joys and purpose.

The experience of raising a child, watching them grow, and seeing them prosper in the world is the reward. I don't expect them to care for me when I'm old.

There’s a distinction between pleasure and happiness.

- why cultivate friendships, have experiences like travel, build hobbies and skills that will give you joy all through your life?

For many people, the time and financial cost of children means delaying or sacrificing all those.

Yes, the journey of parenthood is exactly what the person is referring to, not just the end result. Hard work is never really super enjoyable, but the work is part of the journey and you appreciate the end result.

Happiness is not the only important thing. Fulfillment, meaning, and purpose are important, too.

10 childless years with a little more money and free time vs 50 years with children and then grandchildren.

For most, the investment of having children during the front end of life is no brainer with huge returns.

But those 10 years are where I have the body to do the things I want to do.

There is no guarantee that my body will be healthy and capable of things like extreme sports and adventures later.

It’s a decision all of us have to make individually.

My only suggestion is try to consider what you may want at 50, 60, 70 and how you have a short window in your 20s and 30s to have children.

Yeah, I don't really want my 50s, 60s, 70s to be all that different from now in my 30s.

For me that means being deeply immersed in my hobbies, and traveling the world and being active etc. All that I expect to change are toning down the active activities to things that an older body can still manage, like skiing, scuba diving, hiking etc.

I can't see ever wanting kids or even coming close to that as I haven't even ever had a desire for a partner yet.

> Yeah, I don't really want my 50s, 60s, 70s to be all that different from now in my 30s.

I would argue that you probably have no idea what your future self will want. This is why advice from elders, parables and traditions are valuable. Ignore what they suggest at your own risk.

Maybe I'm weird, but so far I am 36 and have always seemed to know exactly what I want from life at every step so far and have done that and it's been excellent. And it's been quite far from any advice I've gotten from others more senior to me.

There just isn't a single thing about a significant other or kids that I have ever even thought about wanting.

It just seems very weird to me to do a complete 180 and pursue all these things that I have 0 interest in pursuing. I wouldn't even know how to begin. Forcing myself to get a significant other etc just seems like a bad idea and at the very least a big disservice to whoever I end up pursuing.

I can't answer that for anyone but myself, but I will say the journey of raising kids changed me significantly, such that the "happiness" I experienced previous to having a family seems so shallow in comparison.

> But why is happiness later better than happiness now?

When you work on something you love, you don't see it as a burden, though sometimes it might objectively be a burden. There's no trade-off between happiness now and happiness later in that case.

Perhaps part of it is whether one has the disposition to find happiness in things that are hard work. Perception matters. If changing diapers and looking after infants and toddlers in general is your idea of a bad time, it shouldn't surprise if you then find that you have a bad time doing it. On the other hand if you see changing diapers and all that as incidental to a great adventure, then you're going to be happy to do those chores, and very happy overall.

> IMO the journey is more important than the end.

The journey to where? To death. There's no other end. Therefore we must enjoy the journey -- make it fulfilling, joyful, enjoyable. But how? We are not all born into great wealth, so most of us have to work hard some of the time in order to have great fun the rest of the time. If we see downtime-enabling hard work as a serious burden, we're not likely to enjoy the journey.

Parenting is like that, and like many creative activities it is intrinsically rewarding. In any creative endeavor, your creations may outlast you, and that may make the endeavor more meaningful than a more hedonistic life. Parenting is a creative endeavor; the knowledge that you'll be remembered long after you're gone is part of the reward of parenting, but the love of parenting while you're doing it is much greater still.

> When you work on something you love, you don't see it as a burden

So people who don't love their job should not have kids, got ya. By not having kids you can live so cheaply that you barely need to work a job. If kids means you spend 8 hours a day being miserable and the rest of the time worrying about it then kids will make you miserable.

That's a very negative way to look at it. For one, you could just, you know, find a job you like doing. Also, you might have one partner stay at home. There's lots of ways to make it work without ending up hating the enterprise.

> you could just, you know, find a job you like doing

And if you fail? Do you still recommend having kids? In my experience there is great overlap between not wanting kids and hating work, for such people kids would likely ruin their life. Fathers being miserable and some killing themselves due to having to work jobs they hate so much is common, people just don't want to live like that.

I had a coworker at an old job get laid off and was only able to find work stocking vending machines. He eventually killed himself, leaving behind a wife and daughter. Not everyone can find a job they like doing; in fact, it's a massive privilege.

“All joy, no fun” and vice versa. You can’t really win.

Actually, grandparents have it good. They get the fulfilment of family without the relentless grind of parenting.

Does this survey ask people after age 45, 55, and so on?

The winter can be much colder for those without warm memories of summer.

I think the modern day western world is obsessed with "maximizing happiness" as the purpose of life and that's a lifestyle choice that people have adopted as religion plays a lesser role in their lives.

I'm not sure we should accept the premise that maximizing subjective happiness is a suitable replacement as if we all just didn't have children and were thus "happier", would the world really work or would there be no future for humanity?

I'm not sure what the purpose of life is and obviously for every person that purpose is probably very different, but I'm skeptical of the idea that maximizing subjective happiness is a good life philosophy and it seems like everyone has adopted it everywhere.

But what is the alternative? You've said it yourself that religion plays a lesser role in people's lives, so people apparently don't feel they should optimize for a better hypothetical afterlife.

What remains are two options:

1. Optimize for the future/betterment of humanity

2. Optimize for your own happiness

Option 1 feels a bit like optimizing for something that will always be our of reach for me personally. It's almost like a reverse pyramid game where I'm doing something that only people who will live after me will benefit from. Except they won't really, as they'll be optimizing for yet farther into the future.

I'm perfectly happy optimizing to keep the planet a great place to live, but as half of a consciously childless couple I don't feel particularly inclined to make sure that there are actually descendants to enjoy this planet. I'm okay if other species inherit the earth

I'm just a commenter on hacker news, I can't tell you what the purpose of life is. Here are some of my thoughts though.

I believe that everything should be taken in moderation and that extremes generally are bad, so you should not totally optimize on any one thing, but should generally do somethings you enjoy and some that give you pleasure. You should do somethings for humanity and somethings for the community and to make others do well. You should probably take some ideas from religion and integrate them into your life, but not become a zealot. I think you should try to have children if you can, because children seem to be some aspect of the world and life that's important. I think you should try and make some money and work in a field that get good pay, but that you do enjoy and that's relatively stable. I think you should try and be there for your family and view them as a small community, but not expect anything from them or try and fight with them. I think you should avoid drugs and other things that are generally bad for you if you can.

To the people who believe that happiness is the point of life. I also think there is a decent amount of scientific evidence that people's happiness levels are pretty static over time and if you find some success in your life, you will be happy for a short time, but your happiness will return to the static level of your life. I think that people, and things, and many external things cannot make you happy and happiness can only be found from within. However, I don't think that that is the point.

I think that our natural dissatisfaction with the world and unhappiness about it is how we make the world a better place and that it is how progress is made by celebrating our wins and then becoming dissatisfied and trying to be better.

Maximizing happiness is the purpose of life - but most people don't know how to be happy. You can't maximize what you don't understand.

If people want children and can't because of socioeconomic systems (working arrangements, basic living need costs, childcare, etc), society is robbing those potential parents of joy. Conversely, if systems are preventing people who don't want to be parents from affirming those reproductive choices, society is again robbing those potential childfree people of joy (as well as the suffering of unwanted children brought into the world; roughly ~40% of annual pregnancies in the US and globally are unintended [1]).

If both cohorts are supported and optimized for, and population decline continues, the population decline is not something to be solved for. Optimize for societal systems to continue to function at certain levels in the face of a declining population [2]. As usual, Japan will lead the way and show us the future.

EDIT: Ripped straight from the piece in question:

> People aren’t selfish for choosing smaller families. We are powerfully programmed by Darwinian evolution to want to have offspring, or at least to have sex, but women are also endowed with the instinct to limit reproduction to the number who can be raised with a high probability of success in life. When women have large numbers of children, it’s often a result of high child mortality or lack of power over their own lives.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36127247 (citations)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717497

> as well as the suffering of unwanted children brought into the world; roughly ~40% of annual pregnancies in the US and globally are unintended [1]

Unintended pregnancy != unwanted child.

There are a huge number of children born whose conception was unintended but have always been loved and wanted by their parents starting at birth or even during pregnancy.

Sure, but we should be driving the number of unwanted children to as close to zero as possible. Lots of work left to go in that regard based on the data. Hopefully unintended but wanted children are loved adequately.

> but we should question whether lifestyle choices that do not include or make it significantly less likely to have children are robbing us of important aspects the lifecycle and living a full life

I did question it and answered that to each their own, it’s an entirely personal choice

It's not just choices, it's the economic reality. I don't want my children to grow poor..my generation knows how poor and not poor looks like, while older generations were generally poor ignorance made bringing more kids into that not such a big deal. But we are not ignorant, and we know that this economy is very good at giving us the shiny but non important stuff, while depriving us a stable home healthcare and education. At that, I'd rather have less children that are more affluent.

And I'd rather economy change it's broken record of growth at all costs, cause that's definitely not sustainable.

> At that, I'd rather have less children that are more affluent.

I can tell you that the affluent upper middle class people I’ve encountered do not seem to be (on average) any happier than middle middle class people. Nicer cars, bigger houses but not happier.

I have seen what old age and infirmity looks like when you’re poor and it isn’t always that pretty. We all get old and fall apart eventually, but the ability to choose your situation (and take care of yourself so that you make it farther into old age with good health) matters a whole lot. This doesn’t make everyone implicitly happy, but it gives you a better chance.

I didn’t include poor in my comment. Poor people (lower and lower middle) seem to have a much lower quality of life and general happiness vs middle middle and upper middle.

I think middle class just doesn't exist anymore,or won't exist soon enough. Concentration of wealth killed it. Hence less children.

Not having kids is great. I thought I’d regret it but the older I get the happier I am with the decision. If you want to have them, great, but they’re not for everyone.

I truly believe that the availability of porn in the western (internet modern) world is what’s driving the nosedive in birth rates.

"The beautiful ones" is an irreversible phenomena.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U

The amygdala properties in both primates and rodents, suggests tournament species often destroy themselves though local extinction events periodically.

It is in our nature, and an inescapable part of our biology. Perhaps these scientists will find some secret to curb peoples worst impulse control issues.

Likely wishful thinking given the level of vitriol on the web these days. lol =)

1) there already sre too many people. The fact it will plateau at a number larger than this doesn't really matter

2) actual population count isnt really important. What is really important is the total resource consumption rate of our population, and the fact it will undeniably increase as the 3-4 billion Indians and Chinese ascend to first world economy lifestyles and resource usage

So it's a double whammy: still more people, and way more resources.

China halves by 2100.

okay so the population goes × 0.5 (per your comment)

but if resource consumption per capita goes × ~4 up to rich countries' standards (see e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712)

then we'd still need double the resources for that country alone, and they're not the only country that wouldn't mind living like 'us'. The person that got downvoted above you is onto something I'm afraid, inconvenient as that may be to internalize

And emissions continue to rise, ecologies continue to be devastated in the quest for growth and rising standards of living.

People who didn't worry about the "population bomb" were considered hopeless denialists just ~15 years ago. People who didn't keep their kids at home for a year were considered hopeless denialists just ~2 years ago. And now people who don't think the world is going to boil itself into steam are considered hopeless denialists.

What do you mean? I worry it won't happen.

Also, how it happens. By reasonable self-regulation or by the ecosphere getting a heart attack. Now what's more likely...

Yeah, though it seems reliably projected that population growth will stagnate. If the trend of developing countries lifting themselves out of poverty continues, we should expect it.

There are obvious policies we could reach for if we really wanted to improve the fertility rate, but it clearly doesn't matter that much. If Japan's leadership was so worried about fertility, they'd have better work-life balance by now. They do not care, because it does not matter.

Good.

In German someone wrote (Dialog-Form):

Der demoralisierte Mensch, befinden sich westliche Industriegesellschaften in einem Abstieg ?

> "Die sind doch verrückt"

Zur Verwirrung mit psychischen Erkrankungen trägt die heimtückische Epidemie der Demoralisierung bei. Da sie einige Symptome mit Depressionen teilt, tendiert die Demoralisierung dazu, genauso falsch bezeichnet und behandelt zu werden, wie manch eine psychische Erkrankung.

In der Vergangenheit beschränkte sich das Verständnis von Demoralisierung auf bestimmte Extremsituationen, wie z.B. lähmende Körperverletzung, unheilbare Krankheiten, Kriegsgefangenenlager oder unmoralische Militärtaktiken. Aber mit der kulturellen Vielfalt, um es mal subtil auszudrücken, entwickeln sich hinter den Kulissen des normalen Alltagslebens krankhafte kulturelle -Bedingungen-(durchgestrichen) Zustände, die demoralisierend wirken.

Wenn Demoralisierung als eine existentielle Störung gilt (Kriegs-Rhetorik), die mit dem Zusammenbruch der "kognitiven Orientierung" einer Person verbunden ist, und mit dem Gefühl einer Art Desorientiertheit und dem "nicht in der Lage zu sein", Sinn, Zweck oder Quellen der Bedürfniserfüllung zu lokalisieren ist das bereits ein hausgemachter -"bereichernder" und "Migration" geschuldeter Glaubwürdigkeitsverlust, mit dem Zweifel, Unsicherheit und wie gesagt Orientierungslosigkeit auftreten müssen.

Aber will man das ?

> Was der politik wohl gut in den Kram passt, da in diesem Moment eine gewisser Verletzlichkeit oder sagen wir Anfälligkeit für Anleitung und Fügung...

"Frustration, Wut und Bitterkeit sind übliche Begleiterscheinungen und sollen damit als eine realistische Reaktion auf die Umstände, die sich auf das Leben der Person auswirkt, gelten."

Doch halt, war dem immer so ? Oder früher schon? Nein!?

> Und Einfluss - der auf die in ihrer Persönlichkeitsstruktur geschwächten, und deren Bewältigungsfähigkeit einwirkend untergraben wird - legt letztendlich die Grundlage für...?

Die treibenden Eigenschaften des – Individualismus, Materialismus, Wettbewerb, der Gier, dem Überkomplizieren, der Überarbeitung, der Eile und Verschuldung – das alles korreliert negativ mit der psychischen Gesundheit und/oder dem Wohlbefinden.

> Das Niveau der Menschen somit sinkt drastisch.

Passivität und Wahlfreiheit werden verdrängt und Belastbarkeitsmerkmale wie Geduld, Zurückhaltung oder Tapferkeit weichen.

Ohne existentiellen Kompass tendiert der kommerzialisierte Verstand zu einer "Philosophie der Vergeblichkeit", wie Noam Chomsky es nennt, in der sich die Menschen jenseits ihrer konditionierten Rolle als fügsame Konsumenten, machtlos und bedeutungslos fühlen.

> Fühlen können -oder fühlen sollen ? Ha!

> Wie lange waren Sie nun schon nicht mehr in Urlaub ? Wann sind denn Sie das letzte mal mit Ihren Lieben Ausgegangen ? Und sich etwas gegönnt ? Wie lange ist das nun schon her ?

> Gönnen Sie sich doch etwas... -bleiben Sie im Gespräch...

> [rolleyes]

---

feel free to translate it, i'm feeling thirsty, hungry and tired... P-:

> now some economists are warning of a future with too few. For example, economist Dean Spears from the University of Texas has written that an “unprecedented decline” in population will lead to a bleak future of slower economic growth and less innovation.

This some economists' BS becomes more and more annoying.

Why? The real BS is from the people arguing the earth is over populated actually

Noone needs a paywall article, why does this even come up here?

Isn't the primary reason to worry becuase our global economy is founded on debt? Debt only works if the future is more valuable than the present by at least the interest rate on the loan writ large across the global economy.

The easiest way to make sure the future is more valuable than the present is to have more people than we have now, more people working, more people generating value, more people consuming etc.

If there are less people then we need to find a different way to make the future more valuable than the present to pay off that debt.

>the future more valuable than the present to pay off that debt.

Your comment seems to imply something negative about debt, when in fact it's exactly the answer you're looking for. Debt allows people to build things now at the expense of future earnings; it pulls forward technological advances.

Surely there are better ways to organize society, but easy debt is not inherently terrible.

"Your comment seems to imply something negative about debt, when in fact it's exactly the answer you're looking for. Debt allows people to build things now at the expense of future earnings; it pulls forward technological advances."

Yes, but wealth and energy are linked. And debt can only be paid off with more debt. This is no problem, as long as the future is getting better and richer. In a finite world, this must come to an end at one point.

"Surely there are better ways to organize society, but easy debt is not inherently terrible"

Nobody has been able to come up with a better way. And there is some inherent danger in this. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-sta...

Theoretically if AI, fusion power, asteroid mining etc. come to pass, many resources we think of as finite might become functionally unlimited. A post-scarcity society could optimise for human happiness, rather than optimising for workers to keep the machines turning.

This only works if we all change our attitudes and values. But if we changed our values, we could optimize for human happiness today.

Also, reframing only slightly, to a preindustrial person who spent all their time producing calories or spinning/weaving fiber for clothes, we're a post-scarcity society. We have so many calories it's making us sick and so much clothing we have to export discarded unused clothes. That hasn't meant we stopped chasing ever greater wealth just bc we can more than supply our needs. We just find more and more extravagant things to want.

Once we have asteroid mining, a generation of wealthy people will want their own space stations, or fusion-driven space craft or something.

Nope

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

"But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes. "

And

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable

https://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy...

Track the total energy used by humanity and it’s almost all sunlight used to grow plants the same way it’s been used for thousands of years. It looks nothing like the 2.3% exponential curve pulled out of a hat by that article.

There’s little reason to suspect future advanced societies will even vaguely approach a 0.1% increase in total energy demand per year when human population stalls out. Nobody wants to heat their house to 10,000f or cool to cryogenic temperatures. Energy demand is therefore simply a question of technological progress and rates of growth in energy use is surprisingly slow for the top economies.

Nope

Reminds of the NYT article on the impossibility of flight.

Care to elaborate? Are you envisioning some decoupling of energy and economic growth?

The chart at the beginning already shows we don’t fit the trend anymore. So the whole premise is nonsense

Shades of https://xkcd.com/605/

> The merciless growth illustrated above means that in 1400 years from now, any source of energy we harness would have to outshine the sun.

Cool, we can worry about this in 1000 years?

This article is silly because the whole point of the OP is that population growth will not continue, so it's reasonable to assume that energy consumption will also plateau.

That 2012 article is obsolete, as GDP and energy usage has now been decoupled in advanced economies (e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling) as nowadays improved consumer goods tend to require less physical resources than the earlier devices they replace, and various physical services get replaced with software.

> debt can only be paid off with more debt

This is totally untrue. Debt can be paid with new debt or growth.

Debt can also be simply written off.

There is a long practice of mass debt relief called a jubilee:

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

In the Bible, references are made to a Hebrew jubilee every 49 years when “slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.”

The permanence of debt is an illusion created by our current political and economical system.

> long practice of mass debt relief called a jubilee

The concept has long heritage. In reality, very few actual debt forgivenesses are documented.

Note, too, that in a Malthusian economy, debt has a tendency to be wealth transferring: the capital capacity of the system is limited. In a growing economy, that need not be the case.

> permanence of debt is an illusion created by our current political and economical system

We continuously poof debt. It’s called bankruptcy.

Not just bankruptcy, as there are other, less drastic kinds of write-offs that commonly occur.

You’re right, I should have said restructuring.

Jubilees are a crude predecessor to lawful restructuring.

We write off debt via two methods: bankruptcy and inflation. The latter effectively writes down the principal of all outstanding debt.

If we hit hard limits to growth it might actually look like a boom for a while, a very inflationary one where number go up a lot. In reality a lot of debt is being vaporized and prices are going up.

> latter effectively writes down the principal of all outstanding debt

Emphasis on outstanding. The aggregate indebtedness doesn’t change with inflation; that’s only restructuring. (The new money is created with debt—loans create money.)

There is at least two ways to use debt.

One is to build a machine, a road or whatever that increase productivity. So invest a million and you manufacture 10% more a year with same labour or even material input. This is great.

And then there is getting debt to pay your daily expenses or something not productive, see credit cards when used when there is no excess.

It seems that lot of debt on global level even with nations is in second category... This might have worked with growing population and productivity from first kind, but without that population growth it might become bad...

People are really missing this point within this whole issue.

Falling demographics is also more than a single total number, the age ranges matter as well.

I think you miss the point there as it relates to the article.

No intentionally implied negativity towards debt at all, it’s a great tool. Just a statement.

if it's used for productivity increases only.

We are well past that point.

"Isn't the primary reason to worry becuase our global economy is founded on debt? Debt only works if the future is more valuable than the present by at least the interest rate on the loan writ large across the global economy."

Yes, but very few people know this.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-sta...

>https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-sta...

That article is so riddled with issues it's hard to take it seriously even if you believe the underlying conclusion.

>But overall, there is no evidence that fossil fuel use, or even oil use, can be divorced from economic growth. If there is a big decline in fossil fuel use, it will translate to a decline in economic growth.

Yes there is: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#many-countries-have...

>The need for economic growth in order to pay back debt even applies to our money supply itself. Money is loaned into existence. This happens when a commercial bank makes a loan and deposit at the same time. The problem is that when the money is created, not enough money is loaned into existence to pay back the interest as well. So economic growth is needed to create the additional money so that the debt can be paid back with interest.

This ignores the existence of a central bank, which can print money at will.

>The problem with going to a system without fossil fuels and with much less debt than we have today is the fact that the world supported fewer than one billion people in 1750. There are now nearly 7 billion people in the world.

The world supported less than 1 billion people in 1750 because the industrial revolution and the green revolution wasn't a thing yet. Both vastly increased productivity and thereby the amount of people the world could support.

>If governments were to take away fossil fuels, or even reduce their use significantly, it would likely cause a crash of the financial system

"In a recent poll of climate economists conducted by Reuters, most agreed that getting to net zero would cost only 2% to 3% of annual global GDP. Other estimates put the cost of decarbonizing the economy a bit lower or a bit higher, but they are all in the low single digits of annual global GDP."

https://time.com/6132395/two-percent-climate-solution/

"That article is so riddled with issues it's hard to take it seriously even if you believe the underlying conclusion."

I consider this person to be one of the smartest persons I know.

"This ignores the existence of a central bank, which can print money at will."

This does not solve the underlying problem. You will get hyperinflation but the money is useless.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/11/09/energy-is-the-economy-...

"The world supported less than 1 billion people in 1750 because the industrial revolution and the green revolution wasn't a thing yet"

We can only sustain this with modern technology that is developed by capitalism. Production is pre-financed in expectation of a higher return. If the growth model collapses, so will capitalism. Capitalism is not the same as a market economy. We had a market economy before capitalism. The point Gail makes is that a society without capitalism may fall to a technology level seen before the industrial revolution. A society like the Amish is basically stable in contrast to our model.

"In a recent poll of climate economists conducted by Reuters, most agreed that getting to net zero would cost only 2% to 3% of annual global GDP."

Which does not change the underlying mathematics. See also: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

"But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes. "

And

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable

https://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy...

Smart people can be wrong when they lack domain knowledge.

That article is riddled with basic errors. Steady-state economies can exist with debt—it’s how ancient non-imperial economies worked. Debt jubilees aren’t the only way to erase debt—we use bankruptcy, which is more targeted and continuous.

As for energy, look up energy intensity of GDP. It’s falling. (The author seems to conflate fossil fuels and energy.)

"Smart people can be wrong when they lack domain knowledge." Do you know her background?

"Steady-state economies can exist with debt—it’s how ancient non-imperial economies worked"

Yes sure. An economy like the Amish can. But we talk here not about a market economy but about capitalism that basically starts with the industrial revolution. The giant pre-financing of production.

"As for energy, look up energy intensity of GDP. It’s falling."

Energy intensity of Which GDP? That of the US? Sure. Do you know why? I actually read an article from a professor from a well known University (might have been MIT) that claimed the same. What he did not take into account is that the US has been outsourcing energy hungry production in the last decades. (The article appeared before the re-shoring of production in the US started). I send him a statistic showing, how the energy intensity of the US sank, while China's increased. I asked him if this contradicts his thesis. Unfortunately he did not reply.

Here, Gail also mentions this:

Why does world energy intensity remain flat, while energy intensity for many individual countries has been decreasing?

We are dealing with a large number of countries with very different energy intensities. The big issue would seem to be outsourcing of heavy manufacturing. This makes the energy intensity of the country losing the manufacturing look better. Outsourcing transfers manufacturing to a country with a much higher energy intensity, so even with the new manufacturing, its ratio can still look better (lower). It is hard to measure the overall impact of outsourcing, except by looking at world total energy intensities rather than individual country amounts.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-...

> economy like the Amish can. But we talk here not about a market economy but about capitalism that basically starts with the industrial revolution. The giant pre-financing of production.

What’s the difference? Steady state is steady state. Debt doesn’t require growth to be sustainable. It does require decay, but jubilees are a crude solution compared with bankruptcy.

In any case, you see why the article is riddled with errors. Foundational arguments, like debt is incompatible with steady-state, have exceptions. And that is before we recognise that restructuring exists.

> Energy intensity of Which GDP? That of the US?

Of the world [1].

> while China's increased

It’s been falling since 2006 [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity

"What’s the difference? Steady state is steady state. "

From Gails article, capitalization from me: There is No Steady State Economy (EXCEPT AT A VERY BASIC LEVEL) So sure, a a steady state economy at a pre-industrialization level is no problem.

I am not able to spontaneously find data in your link for China, neither do I find my statistic since I am not at my desktop computer. But assuming you are right, what about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

> There is No Steady State Economy (EXCEPT AT A VERY BASIC LEVEL)

This isn’t qualified for the debt statement. And again, it ignores restructuring. (As well as taxation and central banks’ arsenals for destroying money.)

As for Jevon’s paradox, sure. Total energy use is increasing. But it’s increasing alongside efficiency. That makes steady state at a future point more achievable. We are nowhere close to tapping usable energy, so pre-optimising for it is silly.

I like Gail’s writing, but this is a particularly bad article of hers. The problems it surfaces were largely addressed in the early 20th century, when the needs of industrialisation prompted monetary experimentation in the 19th century and yielded conclusions in the 20th. We have a debt-based fiat banking system because it works well for a positive-sum economy. There is also nothing inherent to it that requires growth; our need for growth comes from other parts of our economy, e.g. how we finance suburban infrastructure.

>I consider this person to be one of the smartest persons I know.

Mind elaborating why anyone else should think the same?

>"This ignores the existence of a central bank, which can print money at will."

>This does not solve the underlying problem. You will get hyperinflation but the money is useless.

Inflation is a spectrum. There's a vast range before you reach Zimbabwe/Venezuela levels of inflation, like the inflationary period we're seeing now in most developed countries. Reaching steady state and having slightly higher inflation isn't the worst thing in the world.

>https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/11/09/energy-is-the-economy-...

How is this related to hyperinflation?

>"The world supported less than 1 billion people in 1750 because the industrial revolution and the green revolution wasn't a thing yet"

>We can only sustain this with modern technology that is developed by capitalism. Production is pre-financed in expectation of a higher return. If the growth model collapses, so will capitalism. Capitalism is not the same as a market economy. We had a market economy before capitalism. The point Gail makes is that a society without capitalism may fall to a technology level seen before the industrial revolution. A society like the Amish is basically stable in contrast to our model.

I don't get it, are you claiming that once we reached steady state, all of our technology will suddenly stop working and we'll go back to living like the Amish? It's unclear why advances like genetically modified crops, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizer will suddenly stop working if there isn't "pre-financed in expectation of a higher return".

>"In a recent poll of climate economists conducted by Reuters, most agreed that getting to net zero would cost only 2% to 3% of annual global GDP."

>Which does not change the underlying mathematics. See also: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

>"But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes. "

I mean, if you extend your timescales arbitrarily far away you're going to be right eventually. After all, entropy and heat death of the universe is a thing. I don't think anyone seriously thinks we civilization can continue on for literally forever. Although I'm not sure what this does for the discussion about debt financing. Even without debt financing you're still going to run into heat death.

You are exactly right. The only reason these articles pop up is because the current economic system is founded on debt and relies on future generations paying up for current assets.

It is merely accounting. The planet would prefer fewer people or a different economic system.

Assuming old people get less and less capable to do things for their own survival, and old people are owed help from non old/able bodied people, then the debt exists whether or not it is recorded on a ledger.

Hence if the population pyramid turns upside down, then that assumption needs to be revisited. Or automation needs to be invented to offset it.

> The easiest way to make sure the future is more valuable than the present is to have more people than we have now, more people working

Or the same people generating more work, value.

Or tune most people to value more things that needs less work/energy.

> tune most people to value more things that needs less work/energy

They will be outcompeted and eventually replaced by those who value growth. (Plenty of the world has similar living standards to a hundred years ago.)

Making progress on sustainability doesn't mean regression to the past, but progress towards a globally sustainable future. Hard to say if it's possible, but it if isn't humanity's days are numbered.

> if isn't humanity's days are numbered

This is hyperbole. (As a causative line. Of course, everything’s days are numbered in the long term.)

>> if isn't humanity's days are numbered

>This is hyperbole.

Not at all.

Work 80 hour weeks because people aren’t making kids. Got it

Absolutely not in that sense.

As long as we continue to either produce more value than before, or the same amount of value with less costs, it’s not a big deal. Population growth makes things easier but it’s not strictly necessary.

The biggest problem is dealing with the “transition” of the population pyramid. Public pensions and such usually don’t account for the shape - namely the ratio of economically productive people to economically unproductive (dependents and retirees) - changing. Most likely, whichever generation gets to be retirees along the demographic transition from positive population growth to neutral population growth will get a free ride in the form of lower taxes/contributions in their productive years relative to what they consume in their retirement years. This is kinda sorta happening with Boomers in many developed countries although it’s greatly mitigated in eg the US by immigration.

Investing in restoration of the natural world would be a convenient and prudent way to continue those dividends through the peak. By then some changes to the social order will start to kick in and we cannot predict how those will play out. That's for them to navigate.

It will be war, it's always war that changes the social order.

Changing the financial network cannot be solved by planting a few more trees, you need to have a solution that values labor over rents again.

Debt has two sides. It’s a trade like any other. it should be arbitrage neutral, and both parties should be better off after the trade, or it doesn’t happen.

I don’t think so. Debt it fundamentally a human construct, while growth is, mostly, a manifestation of physical reality. Debt is simply used to guide human collective action. If we find this construct no longer works, we can at will change it and use something else to guide collective action. We currently use debt because, in conjunction with other property rights (such as those enabling market economy), it seems to align everyone’s incentives in a way that is beneficial (eg when people tried central planning it was much worse). The benefit of debt is that it helps collective action whose benefits are reaped in the future while stratifying risk/benefit (vs just equity investment).

I don't know that debt is the main problem. I can see more "valuable" (tricky word - for a different thread) economics run by fewer people. That happens all the time when you compare businesses: some are manpower intensive (sometimes for reasons hard to understand) while others are super lean.

I had the impression that harder issues are conventional retirement being paid for by the people working for the people retired. Even in an era of more valuable work, shrinking the working population while growing the retired population compounds the difficulty. The second is one of manpower outright: where do all the people come from who are supposed to provide services or living assistance to the older population? This is again an issue of compounding: several effects going in the same direction at the same time when any one might be easy to handle.

Was talking about this with my wife fairly recently, and both of us see this as a temporary blip.

Falling fertility rates will cause either the subsets of society that stopped valuing families and children to quite literally go extinct, or for our culture as a whole to collapse.

In either case, the net long term effect on the human race is negligible. Either East Asia and the West recover in a tradfem renaissance (since a far greater proportion of the population as a whole were raised by traditionalists) or it is forced on us when cultures that didn't stop reproducing turn around and colonise us back.

You can look at the demographics of Jews in Israel for an example of the "good ending".

I'm not sure why it'd collapse when the UN predicts it'll stabilize around 5 billion, as when we were previously at 5 billion, our society didn't collapse.

This is probably just run-of-the-mill decline of the west scaremongering. The idea is that if too many immigrants with a different skin tone arrive, then society is destroyed ("forced on us when cultures that didn't stop reproducing turn around and colonise us back.")

I guess I'm an old school melting pot guy, but I firmly believe western society will maintain its historical winning streak, thanks in part to the efforts of millions of immigrants eager to contribute to their energy to its values and success.

"Tolstoy Is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" and all that. Sod the xenophobes.

It's not just (and IMO, probably not primarily) a question of personal values and desires, but structural issues too. Raising kids is expensive as hell in many societies.

Look at Japan, one of the most staunchly traditionalist societies that can't breed because everyone is too busy working and being depressed.

The US too, most people who have kids are bringing them into a society of wage slavery and extremely limited social mobility, in an increasingly unstable world. Even if you liked kids, why would you subject them to such a poor start?

My thoughts as well. It would take a strong and perpetual trend of people raised by breeders abandoning their parent's ways, over and over again each generation, for a plateau to remain a plateau. Humanity has always solved overpopulation through violence and I just hope that our attempt at breaking that cycle won't collapse during my lifespan.

We should seek sustainable human population on this planet, rather than pursuing the conventional approach of relentless growth.

> rather than pursuing the conventional approach of relentless growth.

Disinformation.

Most of the world has a negative birth rate https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-rapid-decline-of...

The world as a whole has a positive birth rate. The number of arbitrary land sections with negative or positive birth rates is quite irrelevant.

This is incorrect.

2.2 per woman is replacement rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility#/med...

Most of Africa is replacing their population but they have a higher death rate than many other places.

Everywhere else in the aggregate is negative with a few exceptions.

> According to World Bank data, the global fertility rate was 2.4 children per woman in 2019.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer...

you're mixing apples and oranges.

Replacement rate in a country with a good health system where people average longer life expectancies is 2.2 births per woman.

Replacement rate needs be much higher than 2.2 in a country with high infant mortality, long wars, etc, such as exists in much of Africa, where birth rates are the highest.

> As of 2020, 47 children under the age of one died for every 1,000 live births

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/infant-mortality-afri...

That is pretty horrible. For comparison purposes......

Top 10 Countries with the Lowest Infant Mortality Rate (UNICEF 2020 - deaths per 1,000 live births):

Iceland — 1.54

San Marino — 1.56

Estonia — 1.65

Slovenia — 1.76

Norway — 1.79

Japan — 1.82

Singapore — 1.85

Finland — 1.88

Montenegro — 1.95

Sweden — 2.15

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mo...

How does your comment relate to global replacement rate?

We shouldn't be so arrogant as to think that it is under our control. There are many countries with many different cultures and many people making individual decisions about whether to have kids.

Thinking we can affect global macro trends like that with policy in one country or another is peak arrogance.

Education rather than policy might be the key ingredient

I think it's moreso that there's a pie... and billionaires/millionaires/VC/PE want people to worry about too many people instead of a very greedy, wasteful few.

Now, you can have too few youngsters in the workforce, as a few countries are about to find out.

Could keep the current population AND have a high standard of living WITHOUT it being wasteful: and GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, it's a fun engineering problem! (but it's also a policy problem and requires intentional change) - e.g., reshaping manufacturing away from landfills, agriculture away from crops humans don't end up eating, companies away from stock markets and toward worker control, governments away from lobbyists and towards citizen control....

Wealth is not zero sum, it's not a fixed pie that people fight over. That being said, yes, there are a lot of sociopolitical solutions to creating high standards of living.

> billionaires/millionaires/VC/PE want people to worry about too many people instead of a very greedy, wasteful few

What percentage of the problem do your greedy, wasteful few pose? I genuinely don't know. What I do know is that the 'greedy, wasteful' ~13% of the earth population (USA+EEA+AU+NZ+JP, 'the western world', is about 1 billion people) forms the vast majority of the problem. I don't remember if it's like 70% or like 85%, but something on that order.

What share of those 1 billion rich people's emissions is caused by your millionaires, I would be interested to learn, but I fear that we can't just push our problems onto someone else, especially that group.

I mean, that seems super-reasonable, but I tend to open these sorts of things with "Either you think that the Earth can support an infinite number of human beings on it or you believe there is a finite number, and most of it is quibbling over the number."

And that number is going to be a function of lifestyle, or quality of life, or what have you. We can support an awful lot of miserable people with stunted growth from malnutrition in sprawling hovels, much more than we can of healthy people in nice homes who aren't miserable with hunger all the time. That appears to be the biggest slider on the carrying capacity formula.

I happen to think that the carrying capacity on the planet is quite low, about a quarter of a billion people. Yes, I am sure some Star Trek tech would raise that. It isn't something you can plan for or count on.

It is currently fashionable to sneer at Malthus, I happen to think that the main failings were his not counting on us finding exciting new ways to burn the future in favor of the present. Yes, we found an awful lot of ways to increase food production, ha ha, here's mud in your eye, Malthus! Now we're starting to wake up to the costs of that.

Quarter billion people couldn’t support the existing supply chain of a John Deer tractor. Fewer people means less tech and lower quality of life.

It would (and did) happen naturally that we went from relentless growth to leveling off and declining (soon).

This is not something you can “seek”. It happens due to circumstances beyond our control.

As girls and women got more educated and started to enter the workforce, birth rates declined. This is for one the result of women pushing back having their first child until after they finished their education and progressed into the first stages of their professional career. And secondly, female hypergamy stubbornly persists in modern society. It causes a self-inflicted dilemma for better educated, financially independent women. They find it difficult to find a partner with an equal or better social and economic standing.

Other factors played into this as well, notably the inability to afford property on a single income, requiring both partners to take up work.

I do not believe that there is a silver bullet to any of these problems. The best policy may be to adapt to these developments, rather than trying to change them.

The high birth rate communities also tend to lack the technological acumen. Of they take over the population, medical, agricultural outputs would decrease. Amplify that a bit and they will likely control themselves well through starvation

Excellent. Now let’s shrink it and reduce the consumption of those left.

Agreed! You can start by getting rid of whatever device you used to post that response and not buying any more electronics. Bet you won’t!

I hate these unproductive and snarky replies to calls for change (although I don't agree with the parent commenter that the best solution is to reduce the population). You have no idea what that person is doing to offset their consumption. Maybe they're posting from a library computer. Maybe they bought their device second hand. Maybe (and this is actually the case for a lot of people), they received their device from their company and use it to do work as well as for personal use, thereby reducing the total number of devices in the world.

It's like if southerners in the civil war called northerners hypocrites for eating food harvested by slaves while also advocating for abolishing slavery. Perhaps northerners were hypocrites but what does that make the southerners in that case?

Thanks. I’m not having any kids so I think I’m doing my part.

You’re right. Sorry.

bill gates first.

And to what end? I fundamentally disagree with the premise that a downsized human population creates a better future, simply because fewer people will require less land, pollute less etc. This not to argue that land use, pollution, climate change etc. are not serious problems. Population collapse is way worse though from an individual perspective. We may not be able to maintain the level of human progress or even regress sharply in our living standards when there are drastically fewer people.

To get an impression of what this looks like, look at what happened after major catastrophes in human history: the collapse of the Roman Empire, the plague that eradicated large swaths of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, etc. It regularly took centuries for humanity to recover from these events.

If there is a collapse (and I suspect it will be due to climate change rather than fertility issues and much sooner than people seem to think), humanity will never recover to what it is today, not only because of the severe bottlenecks they will go through, but because all the easily exploitable resources will have already been used in the 20th and 21st centuries.

I don’t understand why no one seems bothered by this, but I am also trying to adopt the attitude of “getting my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames” to quote Jim Morrison. Of course, that means no children for me.

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