China's Disastrous Demographic Outlook | Hacker News Reader

China's Disastrous Demographic Outlook

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11 pointstoomuchtodo7 comments

Personally I feel the worst contributing factor to low TFR is the mismatch between the maturity of women and their fertility window. Many women don't even engage with the thought of family formation until it starts to become a fading possibility. It isn't a very politically correct thing to say so I'll use a throwaway but as women's fertility lowers so does their general attractiveness to men. So right when they start to 'feel ready' they are facing a closing window, a tougher marriage market and it comes after a decade or so of career or academic achievement leaving them with even fewer options as they typically won't date down.

https://archive.today/yc2zk

Do demographics still matter? With the rise of AI, robotics, and the potential for mass automation across all industries, do we truly need more people? If we did, couldn’t we simply develop artificial wombs and produce millions of genetically perfect children? Some claim AGI could arrive within the next decade, making almost anything possible—so is there a reason to worry?

What do we need people for to begin with? We want more people because we like people. If your civilization has a demographic collapse and your neighbor's does not that's probably going to end very very badly for you. At least it consistently has historically.

Also people keep throwing the word "AGI" around but the only definition I've heard is "being as intelligent as a normal person." We've had that for a while. The reason most of you don't accept it is because it's not actually a person which is the same reason you're not going to see some civilization restructuring event from AI.

> We want more people because we like people.

This is not an objective fact. The people not having kids? They either don't want them or cannot afford them. Nation states? Unwilling to shave off more of GDP to pay for improved quality of life for the people who would have kids but don't for economic reasons. At ~8B people globally (on our way to ~10B by 2100), we already don't take care of the humans here to reasonable standards (even though we could; to not to is a choice). Do we like people? I argue the evidence says no. Certainly, certain people (faith based, pro natalists, etc) are clamoring from a pro birth perspective to have more humans, but after that, it's very much "good luck to you."

Most people consider suicide on an individual level bad. I think it makes sense to consider it bad at a national level as well.

EDIT: You sound like you're in agreement with me. I feel like I should point out that the Amish seem to manage without spending billions. I'd be willing to bet its not their rejection of technology but some deeper social understanding they have.

Everyone's going to have an opinion, unlikely to move the needle.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

South Korea spent $270B over two decades and is still at 0.72-0.75 TFR. In my humble opinion, you're never going to find the political will over the next 5-10 years to increase spending (especially considering nation state debt burdens, as well as social and defense spending obligations) to slow the decline down. Socioeconomic and political systems acclimated to cheap labor from a global population boom that will never repeat, and now the cost is too high for them to stomach.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/south-korea-fe...

> Since 2006 the government has invested more than 360tn won ($270bn) in programmes to encourage couples to have more children, including cash subsidies, babysitting services and support for infertility treatment.

Edit: Not in agreement unfortunately, I believe the population decline is a success story. People who don't want kids or want them but choose not to have them aren't having them, improving QALY at scale. I don't see it as an imperative at nation state or global contexts to maintain the population, for whatever reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

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