The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.
Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger is not far behind that. And there is nothing like mass hunger to destroy a society.
Esoteric problems in financial markets have real world consequences. We've gone nearly a century since the last real demonstration of that. Don't discount the possibility that the next demonstration will be within your lifetime. And in our more interconnected world, it's likely to be a lot worse.
https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more.
(to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated)
The fertility crisis is an entirely individual crisis. You are a parent and you raise children
Your children's pension contributions are paid out to someone else, leaving less for you.
Having your own children no longer ensures your retirement, so you don't have them in the first place.
The problem couldn't be more individual than that.
Do you think they should lose money? How would you be typing on a computer if that evil, evil company didn't make a profit?
There is a reason every communist society has failed.
Just like how pure communism doesn’t work, neither does pure capitalism.
That said, like Democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system, except all of the others that have been tried. And there have been enough alternate experiments that I wouldn't want to literally bet my life on the next one working better.
The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)
(~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size, the remainder will follow in time)
Except for the very last step in the chain I find it hard to believe that credit cards play much of a role.
Food distribution will still continue until the raw resources necessary crap out. Shelves won't go empty immediately, but once there's no gas for the trucks and tractors, then you'll be happy to be near the Amish.
Or are you focused pedantically on credit cards?
300 acres on the westward-facing slope of the interior cascade temperate rainforest. Even if the entire region sees extended drying over the next 50, there will still be sufficient rainfall for crops. All it will need are a few holding pools to reliably produce a year-round supply.
It’s also reasonably remote, difficult to reach unless you know of the specific path, and reasonably defensible.
Survivalist fantasies aren’t realistic.
>Until you get cancer. >Survivalist fantasies aren’t realistic.
"I have a survival plan"
"if you get a terminal illness, you will die anyway, checkmate"
"Ok fine I will go somewhere with medical infrastructure"
"Idiot, there is no medical infrastructure"
At this point the whole discussion is illogical. If there are no doctors, then the survivalist strategy gives up nothing.
The initial strategy obviously works. If you get ill, you just need to make sure you've had children and that your children are healthy.