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Comment by onesociety2022 | Hacker News Reader

onesociety2022

Naive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?

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Not that I disagree with you, but as US society, and AIUI many other modern societies, are organized around a growing population. In order to have Medicare and Social Security in their current forms, you need n increasing number of working age people to keep the programs solvent.

Changing this, and moving to a society where AI and robots solve the problem of letting people retire (presuming that's possible, technologically) would require a massive shift in how people are, for lack of a better word, valued by society. Right now, we assign a lot of value to individuals based on their level of economic productivity.

It would be a change of considerable magnitude to let AI and robots create the economic value and then distribute it to individuals on some "fair" basis. I suggest that based on the current situation, finding agreement on what constitutes "fair" would be challenging, at best.

Good question.

With a lot of old people, healthcare costs go way up. In practice that means taxes go way up.

(Maybe smart AI can magically cure a lot of degenerative diseases like dementia and atherosclerosis and COPD and osteoarthritis and cancer and diabetes and kidney failure. Let us hope.)

The infrastructure we have (roads, bridges, water supplies, power lines, etc.) need maintenance. With a falling population, a greater percentage of the population needs to be dedicated to these tasks, so career choices get restricted.

(Maybe robotics can help here. Let us hope.)

With a falling population demand for any given product is falling on average.

When the population is growing, there is an implicit cushion for investment. 2% growth means that the population (TAM) doubles in 36 years, making investment less risky. With falling population, new investment is taking market share from existing vendors: competition is zero-sum at best, mostly negative sum.

Every investment is more risky so the rate of interest on loans goes way up.

With falling GDP, wages are stagnant or falling. At present young people take on debt to buy houses and things, partly in the expectation that their wages will rise so the debt gets easier to pay off over time. Falling wages make debt repayment harder, not easier, so people will not take out loans. so sales will be lower, leading to a downward spiral.

Let’s say, it’s extremely unfair to the new generations. They bear crushing social benefits for a majority of old people and are outvoted by the same old people. Until population stops reducing, or social benefits are severely reformed. The latter being the more likely, but not before the economy crashes.

But they’ll be able to live in a recovering environment that doesn’t bear the overpopulation strain.

LOL. The environment will be destroyed but it won’t be getting any worse anymore. They will be delighted. Just a couple thousand years, maybe a million, to wait out – doable.

Probably less than a hundred. We're not talking about a nuclear winter scenario. Look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone (most of which is not radioactive and is closed off as a precaution)

We’re talking climate warming by 2-3°C at least, no one knows how bad it’s going to be. I wish I would share your optimism. At the moment, scientists keep revising their prognostics for the worse each year.

Earth's ecosphere can adapt to tolerate that shift. It's better that we don't fuck it up, but earth has tolerated much hotter and colder periods just fine. It's us and the ecosystem we rely on that we're destroying.

Sure, life will not die out. It won’t be pretty for us humans though.

AI and robotics will still need maintenance. The expertise for the maintainers will be quite expensive to develop (longer years of schooling). Larger portions of society will now be necessary dedicated to new tech.

More people are needed to fulfill future needs.

The robots will maintain themselves. AI will be dedicated to new tech.

One issue is that the wealthiest most advanced countries are having the fewest people, while the poorest countries have a the fastest growing populations. Pakistan or Nigeria alone will have more people than the whole of Europe. They may become wealthier but more realistically there will be an even tiny minority of people living well with most of the world in slums.

We can't do anything, because in almost the entire world, the only thing stopping you from having a baby is your biology and your willingness.

it wouldn't be a bad thing except that we're heading towards a future where there's too many old people for the economy to sustain itself.

This will happen either way because there is no infinite growth

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