Hacker News Reader

Comment by gamepsys | Hacker News Reader

Out of all of Japan's problems, I think the fundamental root is they need to import a significant amount of energy. They do not have significant coal, oil, uranium. They have limited access to solar and wind for their population size. To offset all of their energy imports, they need to work very hard to produce a lot of exports.

The economic troubles are centered around having to pay a premium to import energy. The birth rate is negatively impacted by the economic situation. Their foreign policy has to keep energy access as a main priority.

View on HN

> The birth rate is negatively impacted by the economic situation

Only to a certain extent. Looking at data of every single rich country, and my own circles, there’s just no appetite for most of people to have 3 children (2.1+ needed for replacement).

I weirdly think about this issue way too much, since I’m a part of a problem. All my girl friends, who want children, only want one or two. Why would anyone sacrifice, at the very bare minimum, 6 years of their youthful years for 3 children? There’s just too much opportunity loss compared to lower income / less rich countries.

I have no idea how to tackle this problem, but would be very interested to read about or somehow even contribute to potential solutions that are beyond “people have to have lots of children for cultural reasons!” argument.

It's not a "real" problem unless 7 billion people really need a net positive replacement rate.

Unfortunately a shrinking population leads to a situation where there are more older people alive than young people, which makes our retirement and health care systems quite unsustainable.

I think coupling these ideas together, it’s all rather unsustainable, no? That seems to be the elephant in the room, but everyone is too busy here telling others they’re just “dicking around” not having children. Just kick that can down the road a bit more I guess.

Apparently, the expected population peak with Africa and India is about 10 billion people.

My suspicion is that machines replace more and more economic activity within wealthy contracting nations. Humans already cost several $100k in the US once you look at health education and food subsidies. If a machine can pay for itself +ROI, it probably will be built.

Well, one solution could be for Western economies to irreversibly contract under the strain of a high dependency ratio, leading to the cessation of industrial fertiliser production. At that point, I expect a large fraction of the population would return to subsistence farming, and rediscover the traditional incentive that children can work as farm-hands, the more the better (esp. in case some of them die to cholera, typhus, etc.).

Nothing more than a modest proposal to spur discussion...!

That is a beautiful story that, like all population pyramid anxieties, completely fails to take into account the colossal productivity gains made in the last century, which allow a much smaller percentage of an active workforce to support a high standard of living.

Assume birthrates fall and remain below replacement globally. Is the percentage zero?

A below-replacement birth rate does not stabilize at zero percentage workforce participation unless the population actually drops to zero.

And worrying about 'what will happen if human population actually drops to zero' is like worrying about commuter traffic congestion on Mars.

Even in a worst-case projection scenario, like, say, China (Currently at 1.16 births/woman) in 2070:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2070/

43.7% of the population is still working age (25-65).

And in 2100, it would be 41.2%.

As of 2020, it is 58.2%.

---

Now, you tell me, in 80 years of technological progress and economic development, do you think China will be able to become 40% more productive? And manage to do ~the same amount of work with 30% fewer workers?

(PS. China's per-capita GDP grew 40 times in the past 40 years. It's full of smart people, I think it's going to figure something out.)

> And worrying about 'what will happen if human population actually drops to zero' is like worrying about commuter traffic congestion on Mars.

Why not? I don't think it will happen, but at the same time, I don't want to say anything about human behaviour without stating assumptions. If you think (as do I) that there is always some point above zero population at which birth rates do stabilise, then it's valuable to examine what exactly that would entail.

It sounds like we agree the point exists somewhere - we could extend your example to the whole Earth's population becoming 2 and the population becoming (8 bn / 2)% more productive. Why can't we extend it to the population becoming 1?

Because fertility has feedback loops. When there are two people left on earth, their decision to have children or not will not be based on any of the economic or social concerns that we currently face.

It's a completely different situation, and none of the shit we are arguing about applies to it. There's a fundamental difference between running and meeting the long-term needs of a human society of 10 billion people and a human society of 10.

The mathematics you're using is the same reduction to absurdity that leads a manager to believe that nine women can deliver one baby in one month.

But under the current system, the wealth generated by those productivity gains is captured by a tiny fraction of the population. Elon Musk has many children, but most people are caught in the rat race.

Given the preponderance of depression, anxiety, frustration, hopelessness, loneliness, suicide, poor self-care, etc that seems to take hold in "high standard of living" communities, you may be conflating measures of a strong economy with measures of a healthy and durable society.

The 20th century west made an all-in bet that those things might be correlated, and coaxed (and sometimes coerced) others into joining, but it's not clear that the bet is paying off or that it will.

I'll always argue that what we've been seeing for the last few centuries is a local-maxima, and we're in a rut. We've hyper-optimized food and other goods production at the expense of a bunch of things, that we're only now realizing.

The environment is the familiar one, but also at the expense of health safety (PFAS/lead/etc), and at the expense of our societal makeup. Perhaps the optimal distribution of labor for food production isn't 0.00001%, but would be good for growth and other intangibles if it were say 0.05%.

Why would a bad dependency ratio mean we stop using industrial fertilisers? If anything it's the opposite, using more fertiliser and technologies to cope with labour shortages.

I assert at least one person is required to run the fertiliser plants; but if that is wrong, my whole proposal falls apart, and swiftly

that would also imply that if we were to see a labor force contraction that fertilizer production would be the hardest hit, and first.

You mean humanity would be forced to rediscover how to maintain stable, renewable relationships with nature, and population growth would be naturally limited to what the land can sustain? The way every other species does, and the way humanity had done for hundreds of thousands of years? As opposed to the last few centuries of catastrophic "progress" which has enslaved our minds and bodies to the relenless dehumanization of blind technological growth, vulgar consumer capitalism, panopticon surveillance and which is fueling the inevitable destruction of our entire biosphere?

Oh no, that would be terrible.

I'm not sure I follow how the irreversible contraction of Western economies would lead to the cessation of industrial fertilizer production. Unless you are assuming that such contraction would inevitably lead to 0 population which seems an unlikely outcome compared to it just finding some new equilibrium. It also seems to assume that no other productive economy could pick up the slack.

In some civilization collapse scenarios that I am vaguely familiar with, they may have been proceeded by a dark age (like post bronze age collapse or post Roman empire collapse). But the world is connected in these days in ways that make that scenario seem less likely. Knowledge on things like fertilizer production are very wide spread and not central to one specific culture.

I should have been more clear. Assume these 4 things:

1. Industrial activity will continue to require nonzero human participation, even in the future.

2. Culture has no impact on the fertility rates of citizens in developed economies, they are incorrigible homo sovieticus, entirely shaped by material conditions and quality of life. Populations immigrating from other regions quickly reach the same quality of life, and follow suit.

3. There exists some level of economic contraction that would lead to present-day Western countries' inability to feed themselves. In one extreme case, if productive activity in the OECD went to zero, nobody would do anything at all, not even work knowledge-sector jobs; and therefore couldn't even afford to import fertilizer, food, etc. from other parts of the world. By a sort of intermediate-value theorem, assume the level in question exists, and lies between 0 growth and total cessation of industrial activity.

4. Starvation constitutes poor quality of life.

If the level of contraction (3) happened, I advance that one of two cases would happen.

1. People starve. The population does not stabilise. The marginal fertility response of humans in developed countries to this particular decline in living standards is zero or negative. The population continues to shrink. In the long run, if this happens again and again, the working-age population repeatedly falls below some number required to maintain successive level of industrial production, until there is fewer than 1 working-age human left. (This could take several hundred years.) By the first assumption, we need at least one person to continue all industrial production in the OECD countries, so at least one such minimum number exists; and so in that person's absence, we recover a situation with zero industrial activity. The remaining n non-working citizens cannot eat and quickly die.

2. People starve. The population does stabilise at a new equilibrium. This requires, by definition, at least replacement fertility in response to declining living standards, and constitutes a non-cultural solution as sought by the GP comment.

If at any point case (2) happens, then a level of industrial contraction of some degree solves the GP's request without requiring cultural factors. Otherwise, case (1) will happen again and again unconditionally, and we will go extinct in the long run.

It's a very unpleasant solution, but it does exist. I don't really believe that humans' behavioural responses are so non-smooth that the last two people on Earth would choose to have a single child, and then send that child off to learn the Haber-Bosch process -- it's only a limiting case.

Even if one were to grant your assumptions (which I would challenge) you still end up positing a false dichotomy/dilemma. You might rightfully say that you cannot think of a third possible outcome of your highly specific and one dimensional constructed situation but that does not mean there are precisely two possible cases.

As the most trivial example off the top of my head, I cannot imagine any situation remotely close to what you are suggesting without war. I don't think the cost of the precursors to fertilizer will stop Western countries from taking it.

At any rate, the idea that the nail in the coffin of our society will be our inability to produce fertilizer seems an unlikely and remote possibility. I'm not saying that there is no path to that outcome (we could probably spend all day making up scenarios where that is a possible outcome), it just seems rather unlikely.

> Why would anyone sacrifice, at the very bare minimum, 6 years of their youthful years for 3 children?

Most of the most fulfilling and meaningful things in life don't always make sense or are reasonable. But they often almost always have to do with serving and sacrificing for others.

They don’t always make sense or are reasonable to you. It’s a perfectly valid take, but a lot of people are genuinely living a fulfilled life without having any children.

And again, so many young people right now have none or just one sibling. They can see it’s been okay for themselves so obviously there’s no pressure to have 3. If everyone had just 1 child, we still would have the same problem, except it would be harder to make “emotional fulfillment from having a child” argument.

> Why would anyone sacrifice, at the very bare minimum, 6 years of their youthful years for 3 children? There’s just too much opportunity loss compared to lower income / less rich countries.

> solutions that are beyond “people have to have lots of children for cultural reasons!”

But you've already just framed it as a cultural dilemma in the preceding paragraph. Are you really meaning, "without challenging my own cultural values, how can I get someone else to provide the time and money I don't feel justified investing myself?"

Hm, you have a point. That being said, I’m not just a tiny minority who don’t have children. Well, also as a man without a partner, it’s not really easy.

Super-majority of families have 2 or less kids (about 80% up here in Canada). So it’s not just me who doesn’t want to subscribe to that idea.

Tie things like social security, healthcare in old age, etc. to how many kids a person has had. You only get full retirement benefits if you have had three children and raise them to adulthood. There are bonus levels for going above three children. Those who are infertile can adopt to meet their quota.

Only 17% of families up here in Canada have 3+ children. Yeah, that proposal will never fly. I wouldn’t even support it, because it doesn’t really make “having children” a benefit for currently living families.

Oh, I don't think something like this should actually be implemented, but OP was looking for ideas and this was the first one that came to mind.

> 6 years of their youthful years for 3 children? There’s just too much opportunity loss

No there isn't. People want to dick around without responsibility. That's fine. But most people don't really accomplish anything that would come close in worth to raising a child in those six years, in no way shape or form. Let's not frame it in economic terms. People just want to dick around and that's fine.

Fair. In my head I consider “dicking around” a part of opportunity loss. Basically sacrificing whatever your definition of fun is with having children and the responsibilities that come with it.

Earlier you said "There’s just too much opportunity loss compared to lower income / less rich countries." I think the lost opportunity value of dicking around would be about equal between wealthy countries and developing countries. You can go to the beach/lake/woods, drink all night, play video games, and binge TV most places in the world. Maybe the wealthy countries would have nicer TVs and more expensive intoxicants, but it's basically the same thing everywhere.

You have more money to dick around with. More money means different types of opportunities, making it less boring. You can keep occupying yourselves with things other than having children.

There’s still some sense of “I should have children to survive in my later years” in developing countries. Not really needed for richer ones where things have established and you can get support in times of needs.

As a childless woman in her mid-30's, I take issue with this comment. I run a successful business that supports the livelihoods of a dozen people, I volunteer and am a an active community advocate, and I teach, among other things.

My decision to not have children is so I can focus my attention on other economic contributors and keeping my team employed. I'd hardly call that "dicking around without responsibility."

Your post is a great example of the NAXALT fallacy.

On the whole, he's right. There are some people who can't have kids because they're too busy managing companies and employing dozens of workers, but such people are a very small fraction of the populace.

...And even that, I'd suggest, is cope. Lots of extremely successful people have children. They just hire nannies, utilize daycares, get grandparents involved, etc. It can be done.

"It can be done" doesn't mean it has to be done. A lot of people are unwilling or unable to do that.

I completely agree. It’s a fairly bad take whenever people say “you can do both”, because it really doesn’t work that way. Like theoretically you could, but chances are, one will negatively affect the other part.

My sister, in her late 30s with 3 children, always emphasized how she wouldn’t be successful if she didn’t have unlimited support from her partner in terms of income and career. But that’s very rare for an average family.

I mean, there is absolutely opportunity cost for people in high-impact careers

This shows up in economic data all the time, and disproportionately impacts women

Of course young women in high-intensity fields are hesitant to hamstring their careers just as they’re getting started

We either have to embrace the new world and make it work for our species in terms of population, or we have to go back to the old ways on some level (after admitting they were that way for a reason).

Here are some ideas, some wild, some controversial, some super obvious that we can try. But we never will because the backlash from the usual suspects will always be too great.

1. Pay people to have babies. Seriously, tax breaks and literally free money. E.g. for every baby a citizen makes and cares for, we'll give them enough to times their monthly salary by 1.06. You could do this tomorrow, and people would have babies. That relieves the burden placed on people for the wonderful gift they brought into the world.

2. Make daycare a universal human right. Quality care and free for all your citizens, no questions asked.

3. Give mothers 1/2/3/4/5 years worth of paid maternity leave. No, don't get the companies to pay it. Should be a government salary that matches the employer's salary with yearly growth. That way pregnant women aren't a drain on a company, but rather the burden we happily accept as a society.

4. Pay people to get married and stay married if they have kids. Maybe even make divorce a hard thing to motivate for and only for the right reasons such as abuse. We don't want divorces breaking up family homes and our baby-making factories prematurely.

Some potentially wacky ones:

5. Ban dating apps and outlaw hookup culture. We want genuine relationships and marriages to form, as they're the backbone of a culture that values generational properties such as legacy and community.

6. Make promiscuity illegal. Track who hooks up with who and you can't do more than X per year. Seriously, sex needs to be hard to attain. Side note, ban sex work and porn.

7. Subsidized baby-assistance jobs. Pay to get a nanny or au-pair or teacher in every home. Bonus points you help with the unemployment question.

8. Baby making factories or make it a profession for women to do - however workable until we figure out artificial wombs. There are so many people out there that just will never be able to get the chance to be parents even though they'd make wonderful and loving parents, why not help them by letting them adopt.

And yes I know there are many ways the above could go bad, or are riddled with "a ha gotcha" holes, but at least we'd be doing something as a society. Right now, our governments are doing nothing and just complaining "oh shame look at our poor birth rates, we wonder why. Let's just conveniently import more of them from the poorest and most incompatible countries, that outta fix it and not cause problems down the line.".

We could fund most of the above by just getting rid of all the silly government expenditures such as military and who knows what other fat we have lurking in the government.

TFR is collapsing to irrevocably below replacement levels in wealthy muslim countries as well. My friends in the region have cheap housing, relatively well paying jobs - are religiously traditional - the women want families, have the resources, cultural and the family pressure to, but still end up settling for 1-2 kids for less than >2 TFR. They also have help, like maids and nannies. This shit is not resolvable via just positive policy.

I think at some point you need to tie inheritence tax and wealth transfer into the mix, i.e. large % wealth/property can only goto direct kids, that scale up with # of kids. If you have 1 kid, max they can inherit is 40%, no properties. 2 kids and 80%, 3 kids and 100%. No kids, and 80% wealth/savings goes back to state redirected towards those with kids. Property gets auctioned off for same purpose. Positive incentives alone not enough, it has to be cripplingly expensive NOT to have kids.

> They have limited access to solar and wind for their population size.

I would have assume an island nation on their latitudes would profit from solar and even more from offshore wind. Is there a reason why it doesn't seem so?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com