(no title)
blfr
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3 months ago
What is the point of having a civilization if we can't afford kids? Sure, if it was this or that couple, maybe it could be mere irresponsibility, but now the entire west (and plenty of non-western countries) is below replacement.
bluescrn|3 months ago
It's not 'can't afford kids', it's 'don't prioritise having kids'. And IMHO, they've been taught to think this way. To put career and materialism above family. There's also the constant messaging about an impending climate apocalypse or the rise of new fascism/nazism - which helps justify 'I don't want to bring new life into this world' logic.
Other cultures continue to have kids even in relative poverty, they don't choose to stop having families because times are tough.
blfr|3 months ago
There's Africa, sure, and maybe Mongolia. But it's not clear that it will hold or that they have any secret sauce beyond just not having been yet hit with the full blown modernity.
api|3 months ago
What if reducing birth rates at this point in time is rational?
On the employment side, we have rapidly advancing automation and AI that are dramatically reducing the work force required to maintain society.
On the ecological side we have a combination of climate change, soil depletion, and many other factors that at least threaten to impose a bottleneck on us. We are smart and adaptive but adapting takes time and energy. During the transition it may be harder for us to support vastly huge populations.
Put those things together and… are we, in fact, doing the rational thing here?
Keep in mind that no trend is forever.
In the 1970s people predicted global Malthusian collapse in part by extrapolating past birth rates infinitely far into the future.
Seems to me that population collapse alarmists are doing the same thing. “If this trend continues forever there will be nobody left!”
mindslight|3 months ago
Or perhaps, and I know this is a wild idea, we could attempt to address these problems instead of complaining about the "messaging" ?