Hacker News Reader

Comment by ballmerpoint | Hacker News Reader

When fertility rates fall below replacement rate, some amount of degrowth is all but inevitable. Probably multiple generations’ worth, assuming things remain at least nominally normal.

That few in government are readying for that and are rearranging deck chairs instead is not particularly reassuring.

View on HN

It'll be temporary. Low fertility rates are an evolutionary bottleneck. After 100 years all of the people and ideologies predisposed to low fertility will have literally removed themselves and their bloodlines from existence and those who maintained a higher than replacement rate even when confronted with the ills of modern society will have taken their place. This works at the individual level, I'm not talking about race or nationality.

Except ideologies aren't genetic are they?

No, but they can be (and often are) inherited.

At such a high concordance as to see ideologies disappear from the population? Or is it more likely that ideologies and people's beliefs are from social and environmental feedback?

The future is Amish.

The electricity generation in the article is shown per capita.

Now I'm not saying we should generate as much as humanly possible, because even with renewables that has a cost.

And some things have gotten genuinely more efficient (compare modern heat pumps to heating available in 1968).

But why shouldn't we maintain the levels our parents enjoyed? And use the extra capacity if anything for EVs, grid stabilization, medical research, etc.

So population degrowth is a pretty separate issue.

My mother moved to a brand new apartment. Everything is electric- heating and cooking. Gues what? Her bills went down.

That is the power of modern construction techniques.

Unfortunately this is out of reach of poorer people and it would takes a hundred years before all the old housing stock is replaced. But it's nice progress for the happy few.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com