No one has any money for rent, food, or living expenses.
Everyone is overworked.
We’re paid pennies compared to CEO’s.
Every single company fucks us by raising prices because they can, and our governments do nothing because they haven’t worked for the people in decades…
While that is all generally true, the status of most people in developed countries today is better than its ever been in history.
That’s what’s driving fertility down. People who have access to education, medical care, relative comfort and security have fewer children.
My wife and I are part of a younger generation whose culture revolves around NOT having children until all those things you mentioned are attained. The stress of even having a kid, let alone multiple, is not something we’re going to address until we hit financial security.
The subtext there is that you feel that financial security is something which is attainable.
I figure it’s a combination of problems. I come home from work exhausted and don’t want to go out. So I’m at home alone. On the bad side, the work, the stress, the balance of keeping everything because the way the modern world has gone to make it difficult to look for new jobs especially if you lost yours just makes going out difficult.
But that’s because to “go out” I’d have to drive half an hour or more away to maybe a bar. And the bar is filled with people who are going to visit said bar.
We’re at a point where it’s easier to communicate with people hundreds of miles away instead of someone in our neighborhood, and comfortable enough to do it, while stressed enough to not make the attempts. Stack on those that are married, there’s the problem of just having enough time of day from both people having to work overtime.
Pretty sure throughout history most (if not all) generations have worked to give their kids a better (if not approximately equal) quality of life to their own. That isn’t feasible for many people, and older generations are frustrated that it wasn’t/isn’t feasible for many who are currently young adults. That, along with the ability to control if you have kids, makes the choice for many of us. Why would you choose to have kids if their lives are worse than your own and you don’t enjoy your own?
This is in the good economies too! In most of Africa life is even shittier. I can only imagine. Well, is still mostly better than it’s ever been. History is cruel, and present but at least % of population living decent is much higher globally. Still, USA richest country in the world and we can’t Even get universal healthcare, and instead of aiding homeless domestically, or money for food abroad etc… We give a genocidal maniac hundreds of billions to play with.
And yet you do nothing but complain on the internet.
If you really had no options you’d be desperate enough to kill your boss or his boss or the CEO.
Ah yes the ol 'you’re not murdering people so none of your problems are valid". I have a cross-stitch of that in the living room
I really like my boss. He is a happy, older, Santa Claus looking dude that buys us a real lunch on the day we have to come in. Always makes sure we have everything we need.
I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to have kids in this environment.
Not only that, but with the increasingly credible threat of automation looming, I don’t think we should be looking to traditional economic wisdom for advice about labor shortages.
Cringe af. Can you please stop with the constant violent rhetoric? This does not solve any problems and instead divides humanity. You will not create a better future by killing more people.
It has to be deprivatised if it’s going to be a positive for humanity, otherwise it’s just another upward wealth transfer.
Automation (eliminating work) only is a problem (eliminating jobs) in our shitty economic system.
Yes, my wife and I considered not for environmental reasons. My parents thought we were nuts citing the threat of nuclear war when they were kids and everyone continuing to have kids then. They’ve come around to understand our hesitation now, mostly, but it was distressing that they couldn’t understand , if not agree, with hesitating.
Of course, the environment is just one thing that gives us pause these days. People are crazy. Politicians and the laws they create are (or the dissolution of certain laws is) crazy. Plenty of reasons to pause.
We did have a child, and I do not regret it, but we also have the means to support her and a way to escape the U.S. if things get much worse. Many Americans don’t have either option, and no child should be neglected or abused and every child should have a robust support system. I wish we would encourage and educate people on contraception on a grand scale.
Quick note though, one child is still far below replacement rate. Though you didn’t state if you’re one and done or not.
My wife travels a lot for work, and I dabbled in genealogy years ago to track down my own birth relatives. By combining the two, my wife and our daughter now have EU passports, and I’m eligible for a long-term visa.
Theoretically I could be eligible for Slovakian citizenship (which is not their EU country) based on my own DNA ties, but that would require some mental gymnastics and a very progressive interpretation of how closed infant adoption affects legal rights.
I am actually very fond of Texas, and I think the idea of it is worth fighting for, and that there’s a strain of tolerance and hospitality and diversity here that could be compatible with a much more progressive worldview. I have hope that it can be better than it is. I think any place with people who love it is worth trying to make into the best version of itself, to say nothing of the people who couldn’t leave even if they wanted to…
but we’re also not going to be the last ones out if we lose that hope.
Yes, the same here. We had 2 kids (and then a vasectomy). We’re not rich, but we do have a house we could sell to aid leaving, and we have enough in savings to make it without selling the house, if we needed to leave right away. Of course, environmental issues will be a global problem, but the response to those will likely be better in some places as compared to others.
Replacement level for whom? To sustain the current population? Population growth? Status quo? Corporations?
Not sure any of these things are needed to be sustained at the levels we are currently at.
Someone please explain the detrimental repercussions of not having an equal to or greater than replacement level.
sure, i’ll try to explain briefly
“infrastructure”, i.e utilities, transport, bureacracy etc is built to support a fixed population within a city. when the population increases, you have to build more infrastructure to support this new population. this part is easy, you expand your cities at their edges, extend the utilities, and set up satellite bureacracy offices if needed
the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn’t happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?
it would be nice if we live in a theoretical world where, as population decreases, the cities magically shrink at their edges, and suburban residents move closer in to fill the gaps. this is not how populations deplete from an area though (example: detroit, 1950 - 2020)
you will struggle to convince a suburban homeowner at the edge, to sell up and move to one of the gaps left behind by population loss. if we stop short of rewriting laws to force this population transfer, the end result is that you are left with a “swiss cheese” city. houses and settlements will be spread so thinly that becomes impossible for city goverments to provide “infrastructure” without providing it at a loss. your local goverment will then take debt and bankrupt, the infrastructure will collapse through lack of maintenance, and then the remaining population suffers big time
i want to note that i am not using this as an argument to support population growth. i am only stating the big, big problem that needs to be tackled somehow, concerning population loss. some big-brains are going to have to work this problem through, fast!
side note: interestingly, most NA cities are spread out and sprawled so much that they are suffering unaffordable infrastructure bills already, despite not suffering the effects of population loss. goodness knows how these places will fare when population loss actually hits…
This is one problem, but there’s a much bigger problem: the ratio of elderly (retired) to workers will increase substantially. Unless there is some AI productivity boost, many young people will have to work in health care/elderly care and standards of living will deteriorate A LOT.
the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn’t happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?
Nah, it’s simple. You just redraw the city limits. Tell the “winners” they’re now part of the countryside and reduce their public transport to one train per hour.
The problem will solve itself :P
People in the US don’t use public transport, and would be incredibly happy to not have to pay more taxes.
houses and settlements will be spread so thinly that becomes impossible for city goverments to provide “infrastructure” without providing it at a loss
That’s been proven wrong by history. Population density was far lower 150 years ago and there was no problem with infrastructure despite everyone being more spread out before urbanization. Really spread out requires even less infrastructure today. Everyone in my neighborhood is on 3+ acres so water is from self maintained wells (private paid to install and replace every 20 years) and many have solar.
Heh infrastructure from 150 years ago is vastly different than infrastructure today. 150 years ago you didn’t have buried electricity lines, telecom lines and fiber, robust water and sewage solutions. Those things need regular service and replacement. If your population goes down that means your revenue to pay for those things go down as well.
i do get where you’re coming from, population density was less than it was. as a consequence, people had less access to resources. i would argue as a result of this, they also had less quality of life. the reason that urbanization has been a trend over the past 150 years that shows no sign of stopping, is because population urbanization is a multiplier on the effectiveness of quality of life, because it makes the cost to maintain higher quality of life cheaper per unit of life.1
for example, yes, you can supply a neighbourhood with individual wells, granted. but surely it would be cheaper for your community to build one massive well, and then everyone in the neighbourhood can collect the water at the well? the community could all pay their share to maintain the well, and then the per unit cost of the well would be cheaper to build and maintain.
whilst you’re at it, since there’s only one well, you can put in a really fancy pump and purifier system. a really high quality rig, with low cost to run. that way, you only need to maintain 1 efficient pump and purifier, rather than 20 or 30 less efficient ones that would cost more fuel to run as an aggregate. the unit cost per person of the pump and purifier setup would be cheaper to run and maintain.
if you wanna go really bougie, you could all chip in to collectively install pipes to every house so that your local community doesn’t have to walk to the well. if you build slightly more pipes than you need, this would act as insurance so that if one pipe breaks, you don’t all lose supply, and the water could flow round… other pipes… and… …wait this just sounds like a municipal supply but with extra steps…
i know i’m being facetious, but the reality is that it is just not measurably cheaper to live out in isolated pockets, through supplying individual infrastructure on a per person basis.2 economies of scale dictates this relationship.3 it’s inescapable.4. it’s inevitable.5 by all means, if it’s the only option someone has to provide utilities for themself, they should use it. but let’s not pretend that it’s more expensive to group up, live closer, and share the cost burden through communal resources.
i will trust you are aware of “economies of scale”, but i have linked a video here for those who are not aware, and also don’t want to read papers like a total nerd. ☝️🤓
[1]. (??? what would the units for quality of life per capita be i wonder? joy/kg? lol)
[2]. “The results indicate that cost savings can be achieved by increases in the scale of production…”, from “Productivity growth, economies of scale and scope in the water and sewerage industry: The Chilean case”, by Molinos-Senante and Maziotis, accessible at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8162666/
[3]. “…more spread out settlement (“Dispersion”) leads to diseconomies in distribution…”, from “Economies of scale, distribution costs and density effects in urban water supply: a spatial analysis of the role of infrastructure in urban agglomeration”, by Hugh B., accessible at https://etheses.lse.ac.uk/285/
[4]. “…agglomeration economies make firms and workers more productive in dense urban environments than in other locations.”, from “The economics of urban density”, by Duranton and Pupa, accssible at https://diegopuga.org/research.html#density
[5]. “Econometric analysis of the data from the Big Mac price survey revealed a significant positive effect of being in a rural area on the increase in prices.”, from “Identifying the size and geographic scope of short-term rural cost-of-living increases in the United States”, by Díaz-Dapena, Loveridge & Paredes, accessible at “https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00168-023-01244-z”
Not only that, but we’re simultaneously talking about how we’re adding a force multiplier to labor with the advent and improvement of AI.
We’re literally in the process of decoupling social progress and productivity from reliance on population, and juggling the impending social burden that’s going to create if jobs decrease accordingly, yet we should be worried we’re not popping out kids to maintain population growth?
Why the fuck should we create larger generations of unemployable humans for the future we’re building?
Especially when having a kid is one of the worst possible actions you could take regarding environmental impact, and the people already alive are facing quite serious environmental consequences for such impacts.
I’ll take a crack.
Slow population loss, while concerning for policy makers, can be managed theoretically by moving money around. Taxation, subsidies, etc.
The US is currently at 1.6 fertility rate. 2.1 is replacement rate, so a pretty steep drop of 25% loss per generation. But we have substantial immigration to make up the shortfall. It’s an issue, and it’s trending down, but manageable for now.
Fertility rates of 1 or less are terrifying. Each generation is half the size of the one before. Half as many workers supporting the elderly. Retirement/pension systems will be strained then collapse, allowing retirees to fall into poverty. Half as many workers to maintain infrastructure, half as many doctors, half as many nurses, half as many experts in every field, means half as many researchers making discoveries and breakthroughs.
God forbid you go to war and have half as many soldiers to call on, from a workforce already stretched beyond any before. It’s a recipe for mass suffering in a scale never before seen.
South Korea and Japan are currently below 1. China might be even lower. People are, generally, resilient and resourceful. Adjustments will be made. People will work into their 70’s and 80’s because there is work to be done. But there will be a great deal of suffering.
If we didn’t rely on constant growth to keep our economy working this would be great news.
Make the world one that people actually want to live in and this won’t be a problem
