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Comment by NewUser76312 | Hacker News Reader

Whatever the reasons, modern societies are in a lot of trouble because none of them can stay above the 2.1 replacement birth rate.

And every foreign group that comes into a westernized country ends up having their birth rate dropped below replacement within a few generations too (at least that is the trajectory for those that aren't there yet).

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The dropping birth rate is neutral, a thing that is happening like the orbit of the Earth, or a rain storm. Every population’s growth curve levels out, and so will ours. Why? Who knows, and it’s an interesting topic to investigate. But understanding something interesting doesn’t mean that we can change it.

Society will adapt. There are positives to work from. For example the horizon for every exhaustible consumable recedes as population growth slows.

Likely because those species which did not evolve a mechanism for population control went extinct: The parents consumed all of the available resources and their children starved.

That's what predators provide.

Predators doesn't eat apex herbivores like elephants or humans, elephant variants were everywhere until humans started hunting them and had no natural predators.

>The dropping birth rate is neutral,

No, sorry, I don't quite agree that trending towards population and demographic collapse is "neutral".

I don't think it's neutral either that younger generations will have a painful fiscal responsibility to support the older generations who got to live their lives out already.

>exhaustible consumable

Stop with the fixed pie fallacy, that's not how our world works. We innovate and adapt. Look at how renewables are trending, electric cars are growing in market share, poverty rates lowered significantly as population grew the last 50 years, etc.

Are you suggesting the population should grow forever, and that we'll "innovate and adapt" past resource consumption? Feels a bit techno-utopian idealistic no?

Would much prefer a "painful fiscal responsibility" over living out some overpopulation nightmare scenario

They used the word "collapse" for a reason: The problem isn't population reduction in general, the problem is in several countries it looks like it's going to happen too fast.

When the population lowers a bit the birth rate will probably come back up. There is no reason to believe in alarmism at a smaller population. If you're worried about the loss of our economic Ponzi scheme, let's fix that.

You haven't outlined why this is a problem? Population growth overshot with expanding abundance and developed countries are now normalizing to a more sustainable level.

when you had to farm to eat, you needed more farm hands. And lots would die young, or from simple injuries and diseases.

better to have a couple more extra kids in case some of them croak at 8 or 13. with the plus side that now you have extra hands to work on the farm / shop / artisanal cooperage, etc.

Financialization of society doesn't account for externalities.

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