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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Fertility rates are below replacement on every continent except Africa, and they're dropping quickly there. Immigration isn't going to save us, at least not long-term.

I think what'll happen is that areas that still have a vibrant age pyramid will put up borders (either geographic or economic or both) with ones that don't, and say "Sorry, you're on your own" to the latter. They protect their children at the expense of their elders, basically. It won't be national borders either: the fertility issue cuts across most major nations, but there are certain regions where people still raise children.

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Stop trying to solve problems 100 years from now in other countries though.

The US is an enormously attractive immigration target and can easily bring in enormous numbers of new workers if it wants to. It's so good at this that it actually has and those people pay taxes but don't get government benefits.

There is no "other countries", it's a global economy. Mexico exports $450B worth of stuff to the US every year. When their fertility rate was 6 and then one or two of those kids immigrate to the US, that's fine for them. Now that their fertility rate is below the population replacement rate too, if their kids emigrate their country is screwed. Then there's nobody to make that $450B worth of stuff, because the kids who migrated are busy filling the existing jobs in the US.

Meanwhile what do you expect to happen in countries with fertility rates below population replacement and net out-migration of the youth? Is it morally reasonable to willingly cause that to happen, even without considering the consequences to the US of that level of desperation spreading through the rest of the world?

The alternative would be to get the fertility rate back to the population replacement rate.

Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering.

Some countries like South Korea are going to face major challenges far sooner, but frankly having the most extreme examples collapse means the average stays higher.

> Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering.

The absolute number of humans isn't the issue. It's that people expect to retire at 65, but are now living into their 80s and 90s. Retirees have to be supported by working people, i.e. younger people. If the ratio of younger people to older people gets out of kilter, there's huge problems. Life extension makes this worse rather than better.

You make it sound like the US is a parasite that takes the young of other countries to endow itself, never mind what happens about other countries. Maybe it is?

People decide where they want to go, and people overwhelmingly despite significant risks choose immigrate to the United States in one form or another.

It’s not just regions you find differences based on culture, and guess what natural selection is going to do with less fertile cultures.

Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

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