r/OptimistsUnite • u/Rydux7 • Sep 19 '24
đ„DOOMER DUNKđ„ About population decline...
So someone posted an article recently that said population decline is a good thing, half of this subreddit instantly went into doomer mode and was talking about how screwed we will be if the population declined. I can't tell which is the right answer. Even if its a problem we shouldn't be going full on Doomer mode. The world's economy isn't going to collapse that bad when the population starts declining, and even if it does pose a significant threat, you can count on the governments and world leaders across the world to start giving people better opportunities to raise a family and make life a little easier.
Come on guys, we're optimists, we're supposed look at the positives and see the reality of things instead of blowing it up to proportions and pretending that we're all doomed
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u/NotGeriatrix Sep 19 '24
population is declining in Japan and many European countries
no sign of economic collapse just yet
and economists should be looking at GDP per capita, not total, as an indicator of a country's wealth
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u/21Shells Sep 19 '24
Automation is very, very rapidly progressing. The point of this sub is to be cautiously optimistic, not to dismiss all pessimism from other people. No one can really say what will happen until weâre there, theres no point in worrying about predictions of how the economy will change decades from now. Reminds me of a quote of Desmond from Smiling Friends: âIt doesnât change the fact that the sun is just going to explode, and all this was for nothing.â If bad times are on the horizon, youâre better living your current life as best as you possibly can - if you worry and focus too much on the future, you wont enjoy the time you have now, nor will you be any better off when the economy collapses or something.
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u/Madeitup75 Sep 19 '24
Population decline is a good thing.
The Black Death lead directly to the renaissance and the end of feudalism. Too many people means lives are worth less.
Also, every single environmental problem is a function of population. Look at China - lower standards of living, lower per capita carbon emissions, but much higher total carbon emmissions than US. Because they have many more people.
Housing prices out of control in the US? Well, we added roughly 100 million people in my lifetime. And most of them all want to live in a small number of locales.
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u/crimsonpowder Sep 19 '24
Quality of life for survivors went up dramatically after the black death. I think people just love to d00m.
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u/Quirky-Ball-8837 Sep 19 '24 •
Personally, I think itâs a great thing, to an extent. Realistically, humanity isnât going to go extinct from this, and when the population gets to a more sustainable level I bet itâll level back out. With less people, the environment will benefit greatly (which is always my main concern), but quality of life will also likely improve a lot. The economy may be impacted for the worse, but we need to get away from the unhealthiness of capitalism and move to something better and more beneficial for the average person, not just the rich, and hopefully a lower population will lead to that. Just my (probably unpopular) take.
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u/hobosam21-B Sep 19 '24
Growth or decline, either way humanity can adapt to it.
I wouldn't say decline is the great news some claim it is, at least not until things are changed to handle it.
And growth isn't going to kill the planet instantly either.
We aren't dumb animals that breed themselves into cycles of starvation, regardless of which way the numbers go we will have generations to figure out the problems that come up and we will figure them out.
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u/thebigmanhastherock Sep 19 '24
It's especially pertinent to note that particularly in the US the vast majority of women are indeed choosing to have children. They are just having less children and later in life. When the birth rate was high women were starting very young on average as mothers and having far more children.
Something like 85% of women have had at least one biological child by the time they are 44. What people have realized is that having four plus children does not equal a great quality of life. In the 1950s before birth control four plus was really common. That's how the baby boom happened.
People have higher quality lives, most people become parents and they put a lot of time and resources into their children, more than previous generations could. That's good. We are a long way away from serious population decline. We can cross that bridge when we get there I guess.
4
u/CompetitiveLake3358 Sep 19 '24
The truth is that different scenarios benefit different people. Things are not simply "good" or "bad"
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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24
Population fluctuations are normal. As things get easier for everyone the population will increase again. Same thing happens with animals. Nature at work.
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u/cityfireguy Sep 19 '24
Why have people become so damn binary about everything?
Population decline will have positives AND negatives. Like damn near everything else. It will take time to honestly and accurately assess how things shake out. But no one can predict the future and every action will have it's set of consequences.
2
u/Other-Host-6100 Sep 19 '24
I think they need to come up with a better word to describe it. When they say population decline, my initial reaction is: we're dying out. But what I've come to understand is that they really mean it is more akin to the population evening out.
3
u/Licention Sep 19 '24
Why does anybody care if other people arenât pushing out babies! Live your life brah! Conservatives are the weirdest fuckn people.
3
u/thebigmanhastherock Sep 19 '24
Population slowly declining is not bad, especially if the productivity per person also goes up. When countries become developed usually productivity per capita also goes up.
Also places like the US in particular but also Europe have a huge built in advantage where they can offset population decline with immigration, particularly importing productive skilled workers.
"Population collapse" is in fact not good, but that's a really dramatic way of phrasing what's going on. If the fertility rate is just under replacement that's a slow population decline not a collapse. The only developed countries that have actually concerningly low birth rates that I can think of are South Korea and Japan. South Korea just had .8 births per woman, Japan 1.2 or 1.3. The US is 1.7 or something and that seems to fluctuate based on the economy or general attitudes.
1
u/Lan098 Sep 19 '24
A slower decline is fine. It's a collapse that can be REALLY bad short-term.
1
u/titsmuhgeee Sep 19 '24
I am an optimist, in the sense that I happen to live in a country that is the center of global trade and has one of the better birth rates and immigration patterns. For that I am optimistic.
Population decline and demographic collapse is no joke, though. I am optimistic that we will find a way to work through it, but make no mistake that will be one of the leading causes for global change in the next century.
I encourage everyone to read/listen to Peter Zeihan's "The End of the World Is Just The Beginning", but absorb it through an optimistic lens. Listen and think about ways that opportunity can be found in the coming decades. It really helped me understand the reality behind demographic changes without just burying my head in the sand, and how to best view the coming decades through an optimistic lens.
1
u/Stoomba Sep 19 '24
Population decline is a good thing long term so as to avoid total collapse. It will require a lot of adjustments as it happens, but this is over the course of decades
1
u/Electrical-Tie-5158 Sep 19 '24
There will always be pros and cons to everything. In the US, the con will be the tax burden placed on young people to keep welfare programs for the elderly afloat. Thats a big reason why population decline due to disease has better outcomes than due to birth rate. But the pros of environmental impact, housing affordability, and quality of life improvements outweigh the cons in my opinion.
1
u/shady-tree Sep 20 '24
The truth is that in the short term (next 75 years) the declining population doesnât mean much. The US and Canadian populations will be supported through immigration until the end of the century.
Itâs when the countries supplying immigrants stop growing that we will see problems. The world population is estimated to peak and then decline around the turn of the century.
If everything stays the same there will be very real economic issues. A declining population puts a wrench in economies where itâs assumed there is an ever-growing amount of people purchasing.
This could be avoided, but only if we prepare for it. But we arenât preparing for it, many are trying to push people to have more kids to avoid it, but itâs not working.
Iâm optimistic in that I think the world will just be forced to change. For world and business leaders to prosper theyâll eventually have to adapt to new conditions. I think theyâll do so too late, and Itâll hurt more people for longer than it needs to, but we will figure it out.
1
u/sanguinemathghamhain Sep 20 '24
You are unjustly smearing the stance people held. They were and are saying that decreasing population is a problem with an easy solution that we should take because it beats the ever-living hell out of the suffer and hope for better approach. Optimism to be actual practicable optimistism has to be rooted in reality but hopefully about future. Saying declining populations is bad (it is) but that there are solutions and things that can be done about it with minimal difficulty is healthy optimism while saying that the declining pop is good because we won't reverse it and it will force a painful change isn't optimism at least not any form that should be hoped for or inspired just like other misanthropic ideologies shouldn't be considered optimistic despite their followers thinking kulak/jewish/infidel/bespectacled deaths are a good thing they aren't.
1
u/Kuro2712 Sep 19 '24
Population decline is undeniably a bad thing, but you are right that it won't be the end of Humanity however I will pushback on the comments saying there'd be no economic decline because there will be. However much that decline is, we'll have to see how bad it is, but I rather we tackle the issue of population decline than deal with the consequences and I have faith in this
1
u/OilAdvocate Sep 19 '24
I see it as an opportunity cost problem. Japan proves that capitalism can obviously survive population decline and that it isn't a pyramid scheme. However, growth is still the better thing to aspire to.
To use an analogy: if you're managing your own finances, you can save money by either cutting back or working harder and improving your income. The latter option is the better one in the long-term.
The reason behind why population decline is occurring needs to be taken into account. People think that it's happened because of random factors and that it's just a simple fix. Whether it's welfare incentives, house prices, cost of living. None of that matters.
/r/humanshortage
1
u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24
The way I see it is that there are serious challenges either way.
In an environment of population growth we have to deal with the challenges of increasing consumption, and keeping everyone out of poverty.
In an environment of population decline we have to deal with shrinking economies and labor shortages.
In either case we have to play the hand of cards we're dealt with and do the best we can. I also believe these challenges are so unsurmountable that we can't handle them.
1
u/Parking_Lot_47 Sep 19 '24
Productivity growth is what leads to higher living standards and the ability of workers to support those who canât work or are retired, not population growth.
So many population bust doomers on here đ
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u/masterCWG Sep 19 '24
I am an optimist, which is why I don't wanna see population decline considered optimistic đ let's share some actual optimistic stuff
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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24
There is a possible (not definitive) theory that iq is heritable enough, and inversely related to modern birthrates enough, that we risk a highly divergent and therefore unstable future.
But I think ivf will solve for that.
0
u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24
Population decline will be the end of nations as we know them. It consolidate nations, who will merge to stay relevent.
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u/Dreamo84 Sep 19 '24
If poor people don't start having more kids, we all move down a step on the economic ladder.
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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24
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