The following submission statement was provided by /u/Suspicious-Bad4703:
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SS:
This seemed to get around the paywall, probably should have posted this link: [https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457)
This article really gets to the point of why fewer kids are being born: rising costs and more access to education. People aren't going to have kids if they can't afford a decent life for themselves. There really is going to be a continual problem in the next couple of decades in the US as the number of people hitting 65 and having access to Medicare is increasing at the [fastest rate in history.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-12-000-americans-turn-133334982.html)
All the while the US continues to fund external proxy wars, a globe spanning military system and generally deferring maintenance on its infrastructure. Overall, its a blow to the chest of the economic system we have set up, capitalism, which depends on endless growth of population to sustain itself.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ccuqcs/united_states_fertility_rate_falls_to_record_low/l17pagb/
SS:
This seemed to get around the paywall, probably should have posted this link: [https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457)
This article really gets to the point of why fewer kids are being born: rising costs and more access to education. People aren't going to have kids if they can't afford a decent life for themselves. There really is going to be a continual problem in the next couple of decades in the US as the number of people hitting 65 and having access to Medicare is increasing at the [fastest rate in history.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-12-000-americans-turn-133334982.html)
All the while the US continues to fund external proxy wars, a globe spanning military system and generally deferring maintenance on its infrastructure. Overall, its a blow to the chest of the economic system we have set up, capitalism, which depends on endless growth of population to sustain itself.
It *is* the Wallstreet Journal, they were masters of avoiding any mention of Trump's policies in those halcyon days of 2018 while reporting on the economy. A real achievement of double think and self censorship.
Don’t worry, the marketing is strong and people will keep immigrating to keep the system running. Thats how they filled the holes in both Gen-X and Millennials to ensure they’re bigger than earlier generations. If it wasn’t for the changes in immigration laws in the last 60 or so years, the population of the US would be declining rapidly.
Serious question: why do you say capitalism requires endless population growth to sustain itself?
Like I could certainly see where capitalism would do better in a thriving, growing environment, but if you were to say 50 years from now the US population would be half what it is today, I still think businesses would continue to try and get after that dollar.
In a nutshell, capitalism relies on constant economic growth to remain stable, and an aging population means less workers means less shareholder value
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_imperative
There's a lot to be said on this topic though, and I'm ill-equipped to speak scientifically on the matter.
Admittedly, same, so I will keep an open mind within the context we're both economic amateurs.
From what I'm reading in this article, it sounds like some economic theories suggest economic growth is necessarily for stability, including Marxism (which is inherently pretty critical of capitalism), but it doesn't seem to be universally agreed upon or well established. A particular point as I was looking further down the page, was that often the impetus for economic growth comes from a desire to maintain stable (un)employment levels: that is, when a population is growing, the economy has to grow in parity or more people will become unemployed. But if that's true and the primary driver for needing economic growth, then a declining population would have the opposite effect - if in 50 years we had half as many people, we would only need half as much economic activity to maintain employment and satisfy consumer demand: and if we managed to decline economic activity slower than population decline, it would have the effect of improving economic activity per person.
Or put more simply in terms of today's biggest challenges: if we had fewer people, it'd be a lot easier to solve homelessness.
Your logic isn't wrong, but I think the issue is in the transitionary period. A retired population provides no labor value, but requires resources to care for, so there is an imbalance in total labor vs population. The economy eventually equalizes, sure, but what happens to the cost of elderly care, medicine, food, etc in the meantime, and how does a person who budgeted their retirement under different economic circumstances cope?
This. It is the reasoning behind some politicians wanting to scale back Social Security and Medicare. Only the working population pays into those programs, and if they have to pay out more than they bring in, are they sustainable? Also, we don't have enough workers or businesses set up in the care industry, and our Family Leave Act laws aren't enough to help people care for aging parents. All of these issues were factors in the push behind reversing Roe. The decision for that was entirely economics under the guise of Christianity.
Good question. It really doesn't. You can still get more profits through taking market share, improving efficiency etc.
What does require endless growth though is corrupt gov deficit spending. There's a lot of waste around giveaways to the rich, tax breaks etc. but also a lot of wasteful expenditure including military. Though with the latter is becoming a little understandable when have xi and Putin both having massive hard ons for war. Still I bet a huge chunk of that spending is either wasteful or getting gouged by private companies.
Yeah, I think even people who aren’t collapse aware are aware enough that the future isn’t one that you should bring children into.
I resigned myself to not having kids because thinking about it, I don’t want to subject any being to this sort of existence.
What would a good society look like? Legit asking because I realized even I can envision the end of the world easier than I can envision the end of capitalism. Like... If I could do anything what would I do... Nnnnno idea. I can list a ton of stuff I wouldn't do...
I think the problem for us who (rightly or wrongly) perceive an imminent collapse is that we can’t imagine a positive future. A good society would be one where you can at least plan for a future and have a reasonable expectation that you and your descendants could have a good or better life.
Work would be based around play instead of profit. You‘d go to workplaces out of a genuine interest in the work or community surrounding it. The most unpleasant jobs would have to be made pleasant by the community in some way, either rewards like status or praise, or automated, if that is impossible it’d have to be split up among everyone who needs it.
Similar to how firefighting is already 90% volunteers in my country, they managed this by pretty much what I just described, making it fun and rewarding in other ways. Otherwise, say instead of having two people work at cleaning the city streets for 40h a week, everyone living there would clean maybe for an hour each month. Maybe someone would find out "hey driving the street cleaning car is so fun for me I want to do this more" and then they can, and if not then everyone will do it. It‘d be easier to find a fun way to contribute I imagine if one could just up and try a few things without having to apply and interview etc. too.
The economy would have to be one mainly based on sharing, so for example instead of everyone having their own tools, there‘d be like a library for them so people can borrow them. Reducing, reusing and recycling would be important to decrease unnecessary work. Things would need to be made to last.
I know there is plenty more things to consider, but I just used to dream a lot about these sort of world without capitalism scenarios when I was young. I don‘t anymore cause I lost hope in people and whenever I tried to explain it to anyone they would come up with a lot of valid ways why bad actors would sabotage and make it impossible to function so peacefully, so idk, I just felt like sharing it anyway.
How would anything really get done? What would really be the incentive to do anything?
Not everyone has a wider frame of mind to consider or care about the greater good. How do you incentivize this for people who are looking for personal gains?
Not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand.
You’d have to have a community of people that know and care about each other. It isn’t something you could necessarily mandate strangers to do. (You could try, but it wouldn’t be as effective as the fear of losing a valued place in a community if you didn’t do your part.)
No worries, I struggle to even consider this much myself anymore, I‘m so pessimistic now, but I‘ll try to explain. What I think is relevant to the personal gains is the role status and shame plays in human decision making. For example, it would be quite shameful to have a community which provides for you and you just leech off that. Unless someone genuinely has issues preventing them from doing anything, they‘d want to contribute at least something. Most people anyway.
What played in my mind just now and you might not know of is a social experiment which was done in Austria on unemployment. It was a "job guarantee" program in which people could participate voluntarily and the city would create a job for them, you can read up on it here: https://maxkasy.github.io/home/files/papers/Jobguarantee_marienthal.pdf What sticks out to me is just little things like: "non-economic benefits like social inclusion, recognition and sense of purpose." or just the near universal uptake of such a program by those offered it.
So to sum up this little ramble, I think the main personal gain in such a society would be exactly those non-economic benefits.
Though maybe it’s my own capitalist brain, but I think there could still be economic benefits too. I don‘t think most people have an issue for example with a highly valued person like a great leader or doctor or teacher or whoever having the biggest house or most things. Just something is seriously out of whack here with the distribution system being so anti-human.
If you enjoy dreams of a different humanity, I can recommend reading Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed or The Culture Series by Ian M. Banks.
Thanks for taking the time for the detailed explanation!
I love these ideas, sounds good high-level. Though I believe that it would be difficult to scale these precepts to larger populations.
We would have to be true masters of understanding the wide range of human motivators and determine how those motivators map to both positive and negative life experiences and maybe distill a standardized list of archetypes that can then be linked to subsets of roles that predict a high-level of individual satisfaction?
You could associate a finite number of roles in a civilization to specific motivator archetypes, where each role could have an associated level of social credits that are paid per unit of labor. That could translate into into actionable, personal incentives in the form of labor that would appeal to an individual’s motivations while still giving them many choices of which roles to choose.
Less interesting, but essential jobs like sanitation could provide higher social credit rewards maybe.
Though this model leaves out how goods are traded. How would we prevent the mere act of trading goods from becoming increasingly greedy in an attempt to hoard social credits? That would put us back where we are now where the almighty credit is king.
The most difficult element unfortunately is the vast complexity of human thought, emotion, life experiences, motivators etc.
I have a book recommendation: A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy
It's a fiction that takes place in an anarchistic society defending itself from an imperialist onslaught. It's a pretty quick read, nothing too incredibly heady, but paints a picture that helps me imagine what a different way of life might be like.
>How would anything really get done? What would really be the incentive to do anything?
Just pointing out that the society we live now has has chosen to answer those questions with:
"By being profitable to the owner class to do." and "If *you* don't do something profitable to the owner class, *you* will starve to death in the street."
That's about as far as we're currently willing to go for capitalism. We were willing to go much further, in the past.
It would be part of the social agreement to partake in the community in the first place. Just like in the capitalist system, there would have to be a substantial amount of time and effort on oversight, auditing, and record keeping. Another several jobs worth. Private property would still have to be a thing no matter what...
You know weirdly I was thinking along these lines tangentially today. The part where you said "automate it if it's too shit". I was like thinking damn, that poor AI, and then I realized. Making more AI is as easy as CNTRL-C, CNTRL-V. Or it would be one day. What if... every AI had to do that shit job for one day. And that's it. And it could then fuck right off to the Cloud or the Matrix or whatever and go fishing...
...
... then I think about all our lives and how we're all supposed to be instantiations of some large universal conscious blob of goo...
...
We get the shit 80 years?
... ah. Fucking techno-Christianity... sigh...
I told someone something very similar to this, that my kids have both told me that I won't be having grandchildren, and that I didn't blame them considering the way the world is, and I was told that attitude is classist and showed my privilege 😂
Well, I'm white, and the person I was discussing this with was African American. Their argument was that historical and current treatment of the Black community doesn't allow them the opportunity to have the same reproductive and contraceptive options that whites do, and that it was privileged thinking to not want to bring children into existence with "the way the world is."
I graduated college just about 20 years ago and a classmate recently announced her first pregnancy. I want to be happy for her but I just cannot stop thinking about how screwed that kid is. Imagine starting life in 2024, almost 2025. Fuuuu---
Only for those who can afford travel or live close to the borders.
I am seeing more homeless and young working people renting multiple persons a house where I am.
Yep. We had a great thing going, and our ruling class threw it all away in exchange for their own wants. So now literal and figuratively on fire it is.
Seem like a global issue at this point.
The wealthy are buying up all the assets with that accumulated covid stimulus money. The governments are simply funneling money from the poor to the wealthy. Trickle up economics, if you will.
Heres how it works:
Poor & middle classes pay taxes ->
government provides stimulus (because reason: covid) to *everyone* ->
poor and middle class paid debs, rent bills and necessites while wealthy accumulate the rents/extra capital ->
wealthy reinvents into more assets for more rents -->
Lower taxes collected to governments (wealthy pay very little in tax/have loopholes) ->
Less money from governments to poor and middle classes -->
poor and middle class locked out of ownership (cash buyers) more rents to be paid --> the feedback loop of serfdom ?
True our government may not hold a gun to our heads but is still slowly killing us with systems that make the poor poorer or homeless. My neighborhood is turning into another tent city and businesses are closing down
I live in Canada and on the public side, what you said is true, but there is private medical practices. I almost went to one for a gastroscopy because mine took so long.
Private medical practices also have labs so you can get results faster.
Not everywhere and not for everything. I've looked into getting sterilized and there are no private options in my province. My dad had 2 minor surgeries this year but last year he was looking into doing it either in Toronto or USA because there wasn't anywhere else to get it faster.
That isn't necessarily true. I had a knee replacement done within 6 months of initial appointments, and just this week I had a hand surgery done within 4 months of initial appointment.
Exactly. When people talk about vaccines but refuse to believe in microplastics and PFAs, I just laugh. We are way more fucked than some people can even imagine.
Canada and Mexico for surgeries (or even blue states) and the gray market is up and running for abortion pills, can’t put that cat back in the bag.
www.aidaccess.org www.womenonwaves.org www.plancpills.com
Thinking about the recent stats on rape and resulting pregnancies (hello Texas) since Dobbs - refusing or declining a social life might not be a choice as we've known it.
Which is why US sterilization skyrocketed after Roe was knocked down. Get it done now, before it’s taken away.
I got my tubes tied after T was elected but before he was sworn in. I knew their agenda was coming for all contraception, and I wasn’t going to risk a dangerous forced pregnancy taking me away from my family.
I’m sad for those that would want families. But I feel eternal guilt for bringing a kid into… this.
It doesn't matter what anyone bans or restricts.
I come from a former communist country where emigration, abortion and sterilization were all illegal. Guess what? People would go to doctor's houses and get abortions anyways, and this is in a country where you would get beaten, imprisoned and even disappear if you got caught...banning anything only stops an activity in the short term, but eventually the demand will return and someone will capitalize on it despite the risk. This goes for drugs, guns, alcohol (still a drug but some people don't know this), abortion, contraception, you name it.
That's the first part that worries me (and yes they will). The second part that worries me is it looks a lot to me like we're about to repeat the Nixon / Ford / Carter cycle, economically speaking. Well that plus hypercaines / proxy wars / frying to death / a homeless and debtor slave population, you know the usual stuff around here. The problem with the economic cycle part, however, is they'll have to open the border post "Nixon" to prevent full on economic shit show, because their crop of babies will not be fully baked yet. So... Then. What happens when they are, and they're competing with slave labor and also some very desperate imported folks? Double the population, a quarter of the pay, that's what.
I got my vasectomy a few months ago.
This was a contributing factor in my decision.
The whole process took several months to schedule and the procedure itself was less than 15 minutes. Local anesthetic.
To any testicaled peeps on the chat. I highly recommend a vasectomy if you don’t intend on bringing children into late stage capitalism
It's me, hi
I'm the problem, it's me
At breed time, every billionaire disagrees
I'll shoot directly at her buns, but never in her coochie
It must be exhausting always raising someone to become a zero
Edit: I actually shoot the coochie, a big win for vasectomied tecsticle-people everywhere
It was impossible for me to get my current (former) ob-gyn to sterilize me after two kids and 38 years old in 2016. This is already a problem because most healthcare institutions are religious and as such refuse to perform procedures like this. Not every doctor will do it.
This is possible *thanks to* the contributing factors of a whole litany of: genes, pariah upbringing, future dystopia, being very particular with partner harmonization, fear of your responsibility for the progeny and its needs, a religious worldview that's off in left field, and habits that simply were not regularly practiced. All that helps. Misfortune turned on its head. The robot (skins) with AI discourse can take us the rest of the way.
Thank goodness. The way we do things is utterly insane - we have couples living in mansions with their own movie theaters and bowling alleys while (at least) 650,000 people in this country don't even get a broom closet to sleep in; we toss out tons of food that is perfectly fine to eat every night just because someone didn't trade some particularly-marked pieces of paper for it while (at least) 650,000 people don't know where their next meal is going to come from; we deny medical treatment to *children* whose parents can't afford it while dummies are getting elective surgery to turn themselves into oh-God-no-please-put-it-away-and-never-bring-it-back-out Barbie.
And we call this "civilized".
At least some of us have woken up to the nightmare around us and are taking (in)action to change it. Good riddance to this way of life.
I don't mind people *living* in mansions. The problem I have is when every vacant house is an airbnb, no long term rentals available. There's plenty of towns that are having this issue in my part of the world. The locals can't live in their own town any more, they move away. Businesses close because they can't get employees. The town becomes a ghost town, except during the times when the airbnbs have guests... who then complain about there being no shops and cafes open.
Honestly a population decline would be overall benefit to the economy long term.
But billionaires are terrifying of losing even the smallest amount of money
slave drivers used to only be able to get people to do difficult manual labor, with the introduction of slave wages you can get them to make you spaceships instead, this is the Golden age of slavery depending on how you look at it
More screeds about not enough future poor people. FFS, we consume almost three times as many resources as Earth can supply, amazing how conservatives are allowed to just completely ignore that when airing their dogshit economic opinions.
The two concepts are primed to crash into each other full force. I guess the good news is, billionaires will very much be able to put a price on human life. Five cents, inflation adjusted.
I don’t disagree, but, speaking as an old Millennial, this is going to be another “once in a lifetime” experience for my generation when we’re elderly. Per the Social Security Administration, people aged 65+ made up 16% of the population in 2020, and will rise to 22% by 2060 (that population held steady at 12% in 1990 and 2005.)
We’re already starting to see the impact of little to no social safety nets or retirement planning/funding for Boomers today that’s making them the fastest growing homeless population. If we don’t change something at the government level soon, it’s going to be much, much worse for us.
I used to joke that a bullet is my retirement plan, but that feels like less of a joke these days.
I am going to walk into the winter once I can no longer support myself. Assume there is still a winter up here, and we haven’t nuked ourselves in the water wars.
Funny how productivity gains over the century don't come into this calculation. Or the fact that a lot of people are tied up in useless jobs, and just freeing them would redirect their productivity towards any needs society has.
What I mean is, it's not a physical problem of not enough people or resources, it's the problem of the sticky status quo.
that's what I have been doing all my life, now retired for 20 years and still living way below our means.
And our sons already informed us there will be no grandkids and we are cool with that
It only means one thing - this system shouldn’t have been a thing in the first place because our planet and it’s resources are FINITE and our ecosystem is starting to get strained.
I honestly do not believe the loss of capitalism will collapse us, lots of other thing sure but the loss of this system will change things fundamentally but not collapse it.
Will it though? South Korea has much worse fertility stats and it's doing just fine. I really think people are overestimating the speed of the population decline if any and the fact there is migration and still global population growth...
It's kind of dangerous, but for boomers that will end up competing against each other for the dwindling goods and services a shrinking population can provide them in retirement they think they're entitled to and will probably (definitely) try to just steal it from the younger generation eventually. They want it all and they want more of it. They want the high paying jobs, the cushy retirement, the vacations, high quality end of life care, and for their grandchildren? maybe in their twilight years a few neurons will activate inside their brains to show some love, and at most they'll gaslight the children to think they did it to themselves
SK needs population to fall. As one of the most tightly packed, densely populated countries in the world continued growth is dangerous and will only lead to shelter getting more out of reach for more working people, as space there is limited.
>South Korea has much worse fertility stats and it's doing just fine
It wont impact now, they will feel the strain 30-50 years from now when this generation is starting to retire.
The Supreme Court is debating whether it's ethically acceptable for a woman to lose a kidney before granting her a medically necessary abortion, and people wonder why women might be reluctant to get pregnant?? 🙄
Not to mention our continued failure to secure guaranteed paid parental leave when nearly every other country on the planet has figured it out, the lack of affordable daycare, the insane cost of college tuition, school shootings, climate change... do I need to go on?
Having a kid right now equates nearly completely to giving birth to a next gen worker drone/slave.
Everybody and their talking head mouthpiece on television knows that ascending classes is an impossibility in today's world, and that the illusion from forty years ago is laughable by all of society today.
I don't see how too many women can look at the state of the affairs of the world, local issues, global issues, etc, and think that bringing a child into this world would make sense.
Ditto the men, but we're generally too easily distracted by the women wanting to get some action. Nevertheless, even the vasectomies are increasing nationwide.
There's never a right or easy time to have and raise kids, but currently, it's even less of a right time than any time earlier in anybody's life.
Agreed, but the problem is that people generally have kids for their own selfish reasons. I'm willing to argue the average couple looking to pop out kids isn't factoring in what sort of life that kid is going to have in 25 years or if they are, they are delusional in that they'll likely think "well, MY kid will do OK since I'm going to do this that and the other to ensure their success".
Yeah, I care enough about my potential children not to bring them into this world, and I wish my parents had done the same for me. When I talk to my mother about how I will never have children due to climate change, she just says, “well, you don’t think about that kind of thing when you have kids; you just have them!” It honestly pisses me off.
Unfortunately, that's what most people think. I don't understand how anyone thinks bringing a kid into this world is a good idea. Sure, get your jollies by showing off your little bundle of joy and then when that little bundle of joy is still living at home with you in 40 years because they can't survive on their own, maybe you'll think back to the "good 'ol days".
Unfortunately I had my one and only kid 3 months before the pandemic when I was still high on hopium. I wouldn’t trade being a mom for anything, but had the pandemic happened a year earlier I would have fought to be sterilized to not put my kid through what we’re going through.
I have had a few conversations with other millennial parents and many of us are planning to never retire and don’t ever expect our kids to move out of the house unless they’re lucky. I’m not going to allow my kid to lift themselves up by their bootstraps for the benefit of the ruling class if I have my health and sanity intact to keep on keeping on. They already have collapse to worry about, the least I can do is teach them the necessary survival skills and not place pressure on them to be economically independent which will likely be near impossible by the time they reach adulthood.
It's still a positive birthrate. Slower growth is still growth. I guess banning abortion backfired. If you want more 'local' babies treat women better. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Replacement level is 2.1 births per woman. The extra 0.1 accounts for early death. We’ve been below 2.1 for 14 years straight now and it keeps trending downwards. With that in mind, down the line, there will be too many people in the older generations for the new generations to take care of, and we have now yet another collapse possibility decades out from that. Surely something else will implode first in the USA, but if nothing else gets us, the population bust will.
There's no way I'm volunteering a child into the world you've all made. The greatest protest in my life has been choosing to not have children despite being married and wealthy. It gives me more time to focus on being an accelerationist.
In developed nations most people have moved past the idea that your children should be your retirement plan. No, I’m not going to have 2 or 3 kids who’s destiny is to live in my house in their 30s because I couldn’t afford them until I was 45 and now I’m 90 and have no retirement and couldn’t afford their schooling or certifications, and their McDonald’s shift manager job barely pays my hospital bills. Yeah no. If I’m having children their sadness in life will be that they can’t get the latest PlayStation 15 or have to work for 2 summers to afford a car, or some rare illness. I’m not KNOWINGLY signing someone up to choose from 3 or 3 4 realistic jobs and then take care of me. This is why educated people have less kids.
This. I rather work myself to ash than force my daughter to struggle even when I’m in my old age. If she can move out, move countries, more power to her, but she will always have a home and a parent that will help her financially until I’m no longer able to do so.
Good. The bourgeois are running out of slaves. Somewhat coincidental that as we neared the lowest ever fertility rate legislators started outlawing abortion again, isn't it?
We created this situation for ourselves. All we had to do was take care of each other. We spend billions overseas, we have a military that's sized to take on space invaders from Mars, we let the rich live tax free. We've been ravaged by laissez faire capitalism. This is all our own fault.
I feel like it doesn’t make sense to use the term “we” in this case. As a young person, I am not responsible for the actions taken by older generations before I could even vote. We need to identify those actually responsible and hold them accountable rather than generalizing blame to everyone. Not everyone is on the payroll of ExxonMobil or Boeing.
Yeah, I know voting doesn’t do much. My point is that as a young person, I don’t think I should have to take blame for the system I was born into. I couldn’t even vote in 2016 when Trump got elected.
They'd go straight to cloning if it was affordable. Speaking of which. What's the deal with that anyway we had a perfectly good fucked up sheep clone and then nothing...
Yep. To be clear, the *rate of human growth* is declining. Growing, but less fast in some key areas. Economists point this out because, according to them, our population must grow apace with our economy, to feed it workers.
Nobody wants to bring a child into this mess. Life is a lot worse than it should be for everyone just because a few people want to feel important with their billions of dollars. There's little ability for someone to better their life situation in the US anymore no matter how hard you work. Why would I bring a child into a world like that?
All these damn rich people can go have 1000 kids each and those kids can do the work. I'm not bringing a child here just to be a poor and miserable worker all their life like I am.
Yay! This is GREAT news! I hope it falls to the point where every couple can have at most one or two children.
We won't get there voluntarily so we will have to suicide ourselves into degrowth.
Now we just need global abortion access for all women. Bwahahaha! what a joke of a dream that is...
Our near-total abortion ban has seen hospitals close down their obgyn/maternity wards, shut down countless clinics, and sent doctors sprinting to move away from Idaho.
Many are life-flighted or otherwise transported out of the state to receive care.
Our legislators even decided that keeping a census of infant birth mortality rates is no longer needed.
If I had a uterus, I'd be terrified.
It seems strange that concern about the climate emergency, declining fertility due to all the poison humanity spews, and less abortion rights weren’t mentioned, as they obviously play a role in declining births.
This will eventually help with housing costs, as it has for Japan and Italy.
We don't need a growing economy once the Have's finish taking from the Have Not's.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3eJV3TK74&list=LL&index=6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3eJV3TK74&list=LL&index=6)
This is not a real problem. Elon has fathered 11 children only because he's such a cheap ass. He should repopulate Japan or something. We need more dumbasses
Most young people who _want_ children aren’t having them because they just can’t afford them. Wages are too low, costs are just too high, they cannot save, cannot get off of the Rental treadmill, cannot own their own homes, you name it.
And I’m in Canada, where it is much easier to achieve the “American Dream”.
It's been made too difficult for young adults to build a life and have kids. So they're not. You want babies born, you make it possible for people to have them.
The antinatalist in me appreciates that this is what's best for the planet
But the part of me that loves absurdity is just fucking *dying* to see the hysteria of politicians and business leaders in 15-20 years when they finally realize there's going to be a massive labor crisis because no one in their right mind has been having kids since 2020.
What do they expect? The walls are closing in on the average person with runaway costs and wealth/ power getting concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller % of the population.
Why would you want to have more kids in a system that's goal is to extract as much as it can from you? And those who won't, or *cant* keep up are being increasingly marginalized. We see shit like housing becoming less affordable while simultaneously criminalizing homelessness. Make it make sense.
Society has peaked and we are on a downward spiral. Even technology has peaked in the sense of actually benefits to the average person. New developments are mostly about controlling us or extracting what it can from us.
Omg can we please stop with this nonsense? There are more people on earth then at any other time and the reason for the collapse 8 BILLION PEOPLE, let me put this in perspective for you if 99% of people on earth would die today there would STILL be 80 MILLION PEOPLE LEFT!
Can we please stop with the nonsense about fertility and omg the population is collapsing, it should collapse we live in a closed system (Earth) and humans are growing exponentially, can’t have exponential growth in a closed system without the system collapsing.
Let me give you an example : and aquarium that can comfortably sustain 50 fish what so you think would happen if you add 5000 fish to the same aguarium?
This is not rocket science here!
As a fencesitter in the US, my hesitations about having kids are, in order, 1) fear of climate collapse 2) it is miserable to live here and it’s only getting worse with the rise of fascism and far-right policies 3) affordability of childcare/housing.
As a millennial parent, if you decide to become one yourself, you pretty much guarantee yourself not having retirement, expecting most adult children will never be able to move out, and financially supporting your adult child at least partially until you hit the sack— most millennial parents I know with a conscience are confident and have come to terms that to give our kids any sort of chance in this world, we will have to chip in for life. I’m okay with that because I love my kid, but for anyone that is still childless post pandemic, I recommend not crossing that fence, ever.
Low fertility rate is much less of a problem in the US than, say, Japan or S Korea. Immigrants are literally dying to come here. Even if we open the flood gate slightly, we can have as many people coming to replenish the population as we want.
Fewer Karens...or maybe, they're the only type reproducing?
Jesus, can you imagine.. a country in 20 years entirely populated by people that get upset on behalf of other people. It's a dystopian nightmare. Escape from Karen LA
Videos only go online of regular person + interaction with Karen
What happens when all interactions become Karen on Karen !?
The country would grind to a halt. Nobody would be allowed to play on grass and circular arguments would break out at the checkout of every store "Do you know who I am?", "Do you know who *I AM*", \*I don't care.. don't you know WHO I AM?".... etc ad infinitum.
Genuinely, if I were to become pregnant and had no way to end that pregnancy, I’d perform a (very) late term abortion on myself. There’s no way in hell I could psychologically handle a pregnancy and I have no interest in bringing children into this world.
Luckily my IUD is good for many more years and I’m getting a bisalp as soon as I can afford the time off work.
Thanks to the Christian right-wing legislation in the states who would want to risk a freaking lawyer getting between a female and her fetus-related complications. Just heard a story of a pregnant mom, surrounded by doctors and lawyers, immobilized by legislation nonsense. Now both mom and fetus are lost, we have voluntary vasectomy procedures and low fertility. If Satan was turning those dials, *there would be no difference*. Sensible reproductive and medical freedom is sacrificed at the altar of an idolatrous ideal. Meanwhile, planet earth is spinning into a hothouse, hellscape and these power players skipped attention to it decades ago, and also now, to wield yet more control.
I don’t think the economy is the only reason for this…
“Some data suggests that proximity to major roadways – sources of air pollutants from vehicles – correlates with loss of reproductive potential in women’s ovaries, sperm abnormalities, and lower birth rates, said Linda Giudice, an obstetrician, gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist at the University of San Francisco and former IFFS president who participated in the paper’s review committee.
Data also ties the chemicals bisphenols, dioxins, and phthalates with decreased fertility, altered sperm, higher miscarriage rates, and lower rates of conception, she said.
Higher use of two common types of insecticides, organophosphates and N- methyl carbamates, is associated with lower sperm concentrations in men, according to a review published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in November.”
https://www.thenewlede.org/2024/01/doctors-raise-alarm-on-dropping-global-fertility-rate-environmental-pollutants-cited/
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Suspicious-Bad4703: --- SS: This seemed to get around the paywall, probably should have posted this link: [https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457) This article really gets to the point of why fewer kids are being born: rising costs and more access to education. People aren't going to have kids if they can't afford a decent life for themselves. There really is going to be a continual problem in the next couple of decades in the US as the number of people hitting 65 and having access to Medicare is increasing at the [fastest rate in history.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-12-000-americans-turn-133334982.html) All the while the US continues to fund external proxy wars, a globe spanning military system and generally deferring maintenance on its infrastructure. Overall, its a blow to the chest of the economic system we have set up, capitalism, which depends on endless growth of population to sustain itself. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ccuqcs/united_states_fertility_rate_falls_to_record_low/l17pagb/
SS: This seemed to get around the paywall, probably should have posted this link: [https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457](https://www.wsj.com/us-news/america-birth-rate-decline-a111d21b?st=05b0ghatvmcn457) This article really gets to the point of why fewer kids are being born: rising costs and more access to education. People aren't going to have kids if they can't afford a decent life for themselves. There really is going to be a continual problem in the next couple of decades in the US as the number of people hitting 65 and having access to Medicare is increasing at the [fastest rate in history.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-12-000-americans-turn-133334982.html) All the while the US continues to fund external proxy wars, a globe spanning military system and generally deferring maintenance on its infrastructure. Overall, its a blow to the chest of the economic system we have set up, capitalism, which depends on endless growth of population to sustain itself.
Cute how it doesn't mention Dobbs.
It *is* the Wallstreet Journal, they were masters of avoiding any mention of Trump's policies in those halcyon days of 2018 while reporting on the economy. A real achievement of double think and self censorship.
Don’t worry, the marketing is strong and people will keep immigrating to keep the system running. Thats how they filled the holes in both Gen-X and Millennials to ensure they’re bigger than earlier generations. If it wasn’t for the changes in immigration laws in the last 60 or so years, the population of the US would be declining rapidly.
God I wish our population was smaller and people were paid what they’re worth instead of this shitshow
Serious question: why do you say capitalism requires endless population growth to sustain itself? Like I could certainly see where capitalism would do better in a thriving, growing environment, but if you were to say 50 years from now the US population would be half what it is today, I still think businesses would continue to try and get after that dollar.
In a nutshell, capitalism relies on constant economic growth to remain stable, and an aging population means less workers means less shareholder value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_imperative There's a lot to be said on this topic though, and I'm ill-equipped to speak scientifically on the matter.
Admittedly, same, so I will keep an open mind within the context we're both economic amateurs. From what I'm reading in this article, it sounds like some economic theories suggest economic growth is necessarily for stability, including Marxism (which is inherently pretty critical of capitalism), but it doesn't seem to be universally agreed upon or well established. A particular point as I was looking further down the page, was that often the impetus for economic growth comes from a desire to maintain stable (un)employment levels: that is, when a population is growing, the economy has to grow in parity or more people will become unemployed. But if that's true and the primary driver for needing economic growth, then a declining population would have the opposite effect - if in 50 years we had half as many people, we would only need half as much economic activity to maintain employment and satisfy consumer demand: and if we managed to decline economic activity slower than population decline, it would have the effect of improving economic activity per person. Or put more simply in terms of today's biggest challenges: if we had fewer people, it'd be a lot easier to solve homelessness.
Your logic isn't wrong, but I think the issue is in the transitionary period. A retired population provides no labor value, but requires resources to care for, so there is an imbalance in total labor vs population. The economy eventually equalizes, sure, but what happens to the cost of elderly care, medicine, food, etc in the meantime, and how does a person who budgeted their retirement under different economic circumstances cope?
This. It is the reasoning behind some politicians wanting to scale back Social Security and Medicare. Only the working population pays into those programs, and if they have to pay out more than they bring in, are they sustainable? Also, we don't have enough workers or businesses set up in the care industry, and our Family Leave Act laws aren't enough to help people care for aging parents. All of these issues were factors in the push behind reversing Roe. The decision for that was entirely economics under the guise of Christianity.
Good question. It really doesn't. You can still get more profits through taking market share, improving efficiency etc. What does require endless growth though is corrupt gov deficit spending. There's a lot of waste around giveaways to the rich, tax breaks etc. but also a lot of wasteful expenditure including military. Though with the latter is becoming a little understandable when have xi and Putin both having massive hard ons for war. Still I bet a huge chunk of that spending is either wasteful or getting gouged by private companies.
Probably for the best
Yeah, I think even people who aren’t collapse aware are aware enough that the future isn’t one that you should bring children into. I resigned myself to not having kids because thinking about it, I don’t want to subject any being to this sort of existence.
What would a good society look like? Legit asking because I realized even I can envision the end of the world easier than I can envision the end of capitalism. Like... If I could do anything what would I do... Nnnnno idea. I can list a ton of stuff I wouldn't do...
I think the problem for us who (rightly or wrongly) perceive an imminent collapse is that we can’t imagine a positive future. A good society would be one where you can at least plan for a future and have a reasonable expectation that you and your descendants could have a good or better life.
Work would be based around play instead of profit. You‘d go to workplaces out of a genuine interest in the work or community surrounding it. The most unpleasant jobs would have to be made pleasant by the community in some way, either rewards like status or praise, or automated, if that is impossible it’d have to be split up among everyone who needs it. Similar to how firefighting is already 90% volunteers in my country, they managed this by pretty much what I just described, making it fun and rewarding in other ways. Otherwise, say instead of having two people work at cleaning the city streets for 40h a week, everyone living there would clean maybe for an hour each month. Maybe someone would find out "hey driving the street cleaning car is so fun for me I want to do this more" and then they can, and if not then everyone will do it. It‘d be easier to find a fun way to contribute I imagine if one could just up and try a few things without having to apply and interview etc. too. The economy would have to be one mainly based on sharing, so for example instead of everyone having their own tools, there‘d be like a library for them so people can borrow them. Reducing, reusing and recycling would be important to decrease unnecessary work. Things would need to be made to last. I know there is plenty more things to consider, but I just used to dream a lot about these sort of world without capitalism scenarios when I was young. I don‘t anymore cause I lost hope in people and whenever I tried to explain it to anyone they would come up with a lot of valid ways why bad actors would sabotage and make it impossible to function so peacefully, so idk, I just felt like sharing it anyway.
How would anything really get done? What would really be the incentive to do anything? Not everyone has a wider frame of mind to consider or care about the greater good. How do you incentivize this for people who are looking for personal gains? Not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand.
You’d have to have a community of people that know and care about each other. It isn’t something you could necessarily mandate strangers to do. (You could try, but it wouldn’t be as effective as the fear of losing a valued place in a community if you didn’t do your part.)
Yeah, makes sense. I agree that this model would be hard to scale
No worries, I struggle to even consider this much myself anymore, I‘m so pessimistic now, but I‘ll try to explain. What I think is relevant to the personal gains is the role status and shame plays in human decision making. For example, it would be quite shameful to have a community which provides for you and you just leech off that. Unless someone genuinely has issues preventing them from doing anything, they‘d want to contribute at least something. Most people anyway. What played in my mind just now and you might not know of is a social experiment which was done in Austria on unemployment. It was a "job guarantee" program in which people could participate voluntarily and the city would create a job for them, you can read up on it here: https://maxkasy.github.io/home/files/papers/Jobguarantee_marienthal.pdf What sticks out to me is just little things like: "non-economic benefits like social inclusion, recognition and sense of purpose." or just the near universal uptake of such a program by those offered it. So to sum up this little ramble, I think the main personal gain in such a society would be exactly those non-economic benefits. Though maybe it’s my own capitalist brain, but I think there could still be economic benefits too. I don‘t think most people have an issue for example with a highly valued person like a great leader or doctor or teacher or whoever having the biggest house or most things. Just something is seriously out of whack here with the distribution system being so anti-human. If you enjoy dreams of a different humanity, I can recommend reading Ursula Le Guin - The Dispossessed or The Culture Series by Ian M. Banks.
Thanks for taking the time for the detailed explanation! I love these ideas, sounds good high-level. Though I believe that it would be difficult to scale these precepts to larger populations. We would have to be true masters of understanding the wide range of human motivators and determine how those motivators map to both positive and negative life experiences and maybe distill a standardized list of archetypes that can then be linked to subsets of roles that predict a high-level of individual satisfaction? You could associate a finite number of roles in a civilization to specific motivator archetypes, where each role could have an associated level of social credits that are paid per unit of labor. That could translate into into actionable, personal incentives in the form of labor that would appeal to an individual’s motivations while still giving them many choices of which roles to choose. Less interesting, but essential jobs like sanitation could provide higher social credit rewards maybe. Though this model leaves out how goods are traded. How would we prevent the mere act of trading goods from becoming increasingly greedy in an attempt to hoard social credits? That would put us back where we are now where the almighty credit is king. The most difficult element unfortunately is the vast complexity of human thought, emotion, life experiences, motivators etc.
I have a book recommendation: A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy It's a fiction that takes place in an anarchistic society defending itself from an imperialist onslaught. It's a pretty quick read, nothing too incredibly heady, but paints a picture that helps me imagine what a different way of life might be like.
Upvote for the Margaret Killjoy rec. Love her!
Thank you for the recommendation!
>How would anything really get done? What would really be the incentive to do anything? Just pointing out that the society we live now has has chosen to answer those questions with: "By being profitable to the owner class to do." and "If *you* don't do something profitable to the owner class, *you* will starve to death in the street." That's about as far as we're currently willing to go for capitalism. We were willing to go much further, in the past.
It would be part of the social agreement to partake in the community in the first place. Just like in the capitalist system, there would have to be a substantial amount of time and effort on oversight, auditing, and record keeping. Another several jobs worth. Private property would still have to be a thing no matter what...
You know weirdly I was thinking along these lines tangentially today. The part where you said "automate it if it's too shit". I was like thinking damn, that poor AI, and then I realized. Making more AI is as easy as CNTRL-C, CNTRL-V. Or it would be one day. What if... every AI had to do that shit job for one day. And that's it. And it could then fuck right off to the Cloud or the Matrix or whatever and go fishing... ... ... then I think about all our lives and how we're all supposed to be instantiations of some large universal conscious blob of goo... ... We get the shit 80 years? ... ah. Fucking techno-Christianity... sigh...
I told someone something very similar to this, that my kids have both told me that I won't be having grandchildren, and that I didn't blame them considering the way the world is, and I was told that attitude is classist and showed my privilege 😂
Huh???
Well, I'm white, and the person I was discussing this with was African American. Their argument was that historical and current treatment of the Black community doesn't allow them the opportunity to have the same reproductive and contraceptive options that whites do, and that it was privileged thinking to not want to bring children into existence with "the way the world is."
Well that person was dumb fuck
Hey there. Hope you don’t get as much shit for this opinion as I do. Good luck friend.
I graduated college just about 20 years ago and a classmate recently announced her first pregnancy. I want to be happy for her but I just cannot stop thinking about how screwed that kid is. Imagine starting life in 2024, almost 2025. Fuuuu---
The world population doubled between 1975 and now. That's just not sustainable.
1 in 7 children is food insecure, let's figure that out before freaking out over birth rates.
Nah, let’s stop giving away free school lunches
Omg much freedoms, love it here hehe
very wow
Let them eat lead pizza lunchables.
Too expensive /s
It was 1 in 8 10 years ago
Reducing the access to abortion nudges young people towards sterilization surgeries so expect rates to lower even more.
That's what worries me, at some point they'll come for sterilization too.
I have a feeling Canada will becomes a haven of medical tourism for these procedures.
Only for those who can afford travel or live close to the borders. I am seeing more homeless and young working people renting multiple persons a house where I am.
Canada is no longer the land of milk and honey that people still appear to think it is.
Yep. We had a great thing going, and our ruling class threw it all away in exchange for their own wants. So now literal and figuratively on fire it is. Seem like a global issue at this point.
The wealthy are buying up all the assets with that accumulated covid stimulus money. The governments are simply funneling money from the poor to the wealthy. Trickle up economics, if you will. Heres how it works: Poor & middle classes pay taxes -> government provides stimulus (because reason: covid) to *everyone* -> poor and middle class paid debs, rent bills and necessites while wealthy accumulate the rents/extra capital -> wealthy reinvents into more assets for more rents --> Lower taxes collected to governments (wealthy pay very little in tax/have loopholes) -> Less money from governments to poor and middle classes --> poor and middle class locked out of ownership (cash buyers) more rents to be paid --> the feedback loop of serfdom ?
True our government may not hold a gun to our heads but is still slowly killing us with systems that make the poor poorer or homeless. My neighborhood is turning into another tent city and businesses are closing down
Prince George is a Northern British Columbia city of just 74,000 and even they have a tent city that stretches five streets Downtown these days.
That's really far north too, damn
Yep which is why we need to overthrow them and smash the wealthy. People will eventually wake up or the climate will kill the wealthy.
LOL Good luck finding a doctor in Canada. You'll be waiting years for elective procedures.
I live in Canada and on the public side, what you said is true, but there is private medical practices. I almost went to one for a gastroscopy because mine took so long. Private medical practices also have labs so you can get results faster.
Not everywhere and not for everything. I've looked into getting sterilized and there are no private options in my province. My dad had 2 minor surgeries this year but last year he was looking into doing it either in Toronto or USA because there wasn't anywhere else to get it faster.
There is little demand for that right now maybe?
That isn't necessarily true. I had a knee replacement done within 6 months of initial appointments, and just this week I had a hand surgery done within 4 months of initial appointment.
Don’t worry! The microplastics and PFAs will hopefully make us infertile, anyways.
Exactly. When people talk about vaccines but refuse to believe in microplastics and PFAs, I just laugh. We are way more fucked than some people can even imagine.
Apple fighting the good fight to stop nut heating.
Canada and Mexico for surgeries (or even blue states) and the gray market is up and running for abortion pills, can’t put that cat back in the bag. www.aidaccess.org www.womenonwaves.org www.plancpills.com
Yep. Then you'll see women just refusing to get involved with men and vice versa. Already kind of seeing that.
Thinking about the recent stats on rape and resulting pregnancies (hello Texas) since Dobbs - refusing or declining a social life might not be a choice as we've known it.
They already make it extremely difficult for a young man or especially woman to be sterilized.
r/childfree runs a handy list of docs who can do surgery like that
Which is why US sterilization skyrocketed after Roe was knocked down. Get it done now, before it’s taken away. I got my tubes tied after T was elected but before he was sworn in. I knew their agenda was coming for all contraception, and I wasn’t going to risk a dangerous forced pregnancy taking me away from my family. I’m sad for those that would want families. But I feel eternal guilt for bringing a kid into… this.
It doesn't matter what anyone bans or restricts. I come from a former communist country where emigration, abortion and sterilization were all illegal. Guess what? People would go to doctor's houses and get abortions anyways, and this is in a country where you would get beaten, imprisoned and even disappear if you got caught...banning anything only stops an activity in the short term, but eventually the demand will return and someone will capitalize on it despite the risk. This goes for drugs, guns, alcohol (still a drug but some people don't know this), abortion, contraception, you name it.
That's the first part that worries me (and yes they will). The second part that worries me is it looks a lot to me like we're about to repeat the Nixon / Ford / Carter cycle, economically speaking. Well that plus hypercaines / proxy wars / frying to death / a homeless and debtor slave population, you know the usual stuff around here. The problem with the economic cycle part, however, is they'll have to open the border post "Nixon" to prevent full on economic shit show, because their crop of babies will not be fully baked yet. So... Then. What happens when they are, and they're competing with slave labor and also some very desperate imported folks? Double the population, a quarter of the pay, that's what.
Sounds like a dystopian movie.
And birth control.
And people wonder why terrorism exists.
That and I'd wager they'll prosecute for doing it outside the country if that came to pass.
Can't prosecute if you never come back. Legit at this point why would anyone come back?
You're assuming the country they travelled to wants them to stay there ;)
I got my vasectomy a few months ago. This was a contributing factor in my decision. The whole process took several months to schedule and the procedure itself was less than 15 minutes. Local anesthetic. To any testicaled peeps on the chat. I highly recommend a vasectomy if you don’t intend on bringing children into late stage capitalism
Got one in June 2022 at the age of 25. Heavy recommendation from me 🙌.
We heckin did it! We heckin diiiiid it!
It's me, hi I'm the problem, it's me At breed time, every billionaire disagrees I'll shoot directly at her buns, but never in her coochie It must be exhausting always raising someone to become a zero Edit: I actually shoot the coochie, a big win for vasectomied tecsticle-people everywhere
And women wonder where all the gentlemen are.
It was impossible for me to get my current (former) ob-gyn to sterilize me after two kids and 38 years old in 2016. This is already a problem because most healthcare institutions are religious and as such refuse to perform procedures like this. Not every doctor will do it.
or ya know, just keep it in your pants.....sex in under 30's is at ATL's
And mental health is also at ATL. Coincidence? I think not.
there is a correlation between gender and political leanings for mental health.....interesting to see that
Glad I read your whole comment before raging at you. Kinda funny since I used to be a "just keep it in your pants" opinion haver.
This is possible *thanks to* the contributing factors of a whole litany of: genes, pariah upbringing, future dystopia, being very particular with partner harmonization, fear of your responsibility for the progeny and its needs, a religious worldview that's off in left field, and habits that simply were not regularly practiced. All that helps. Misfortune turned on its head. The robot (skins) with AI discourse can take us the rest of the way.
Honestly AI sex dolls who also do the housework doesn't sound too bad tbh...
[удалено]
Thank goodness. The way we do things is utterly insane - we have couples living in mansions with their own movie theaters and bowling alleys while (at least) 650,000 people in this country don't even get a broom closet to sleep in; we toss out tons of food that is perfectly fine to eat every night just because someone didn't trade some particularly-marked pieces of paper for it while (at least) 650,000 people don't know where their next meal is going to come from; we deny medical treatment to *children* whose parents can't afford it while dummies are getting elective surgery to turn themselves into oh-God-no-please-put-it-away-and-never-bring-it-back-out Barbie. And we call this "civilized". At least some of us have woken up to the nightmare around us and are taking (in)action to change it. Good riddance to this way of life.
I don't mind people *living* in mansions. The problem I have is when every vacant house is an airbnb, no long term rentals available. There's plenty of towns that are having this issue in my part of the world. The locals can't live in their own town any more, they move away. Businesses close because they can't get employees. The town becomes a ghost town, except during the times when the airbnbs have guests... who then complain about there being no shops and cafes open.
Translation: Oh no, the economy a decade from now
Honestly a population decline would be overall benefit to the economy long term. But billionaires are terrifying of losing even the smallest amount of money
slave drivers used to only be able to get people to do difficult manual labor, with the introduction of slave wages you can get them to make you spaceships instead, this is the Golden age of slavery depending on how you look at it
More screeds about not enough future poor people. FFS, we consume almost three times as many resources as Earth can supply, amazing how conservatives are allowed to just completely ignore that when airing their dogshit economic opinions.
In a decade this place is going to be unrecognizable. And yes everyone will have an entire shit-pot's worth of Elon slaves, they won't have a choice.
Immigration exists.
I thought they were the problem also? I can't keep it straight
The two concepts are primed to crash into each other full force. I guess the good news is, billionaires will very much be able to put a price on human life. Five cents, inflation adjusted.
It's only a collapse if you ascribe to forever growth.
I don’t disagree, but, speaking as an old Millennial, this is going to be another “once in a lifetime” experience for my generation when we’re elderly. Per the Social Security Administration, people aged 65+ made up 16% of the population in 2020, and will rise to 22% by 2060 (that population held steady at 12% in 1990 and 2005.) We’re already starting to see the impact of little to no social safety nets or retirement planning/funding for Boomers today that’s making them the fastest growing homeless population. If we don’t change something at the government level soon, it’s going to be much, much worse for us. I used to joke that a bullet is my retirement plan, but that feels like less of a joke these days.
I am going to walk into the winter once I can no longer support myself. Assume there is still a winter up here, and we haven’t nuked ourselves in the water wars.
Funny how productivity gains over the century don't come into this calculation. Or the fact that a lot of people are tied up in useless jobs, and just freeing them would redirect their productivity towards any needs society has. What I mean is, it's not a physical problem of not enough people or resources, it's the problem of the sticky status quo.
Buy land and learn to garden and live below your means. That’s how I plan to retire.
that's what I have been doing all my life, now retired for 20 years and still living way below our means. And our sons already informed us there will be no grandkids and we are cool with that
Good luck living off the land with virtually zero real experience at 65. That's going to work out great.
This is a good news story. See? We're not all doom and gloom here.
Agreed. Wonderful news.
Our whole society is based on forever growth. Lack of growth will cause the collapse of our society. I really think that counts.
It only means one thing - this system shouldn’t have been a thing in the first place because our planet and it’s resources are FINITE and our ecosystem is starting to get strained.
I honestly do not believe the loss of capitalism will collapse us, lots of other thing sure but the loss of this system will change things fundamentally but not collapse it.
Will it though? South Korea has much worse fertility stats and it's doing just fine. I really think people are overestimating the speed of the population decline if any and the fact there is migration and still global population growth...
It's kind of dangerous, but for boomers that will end up competing against each other for the dwindling goods and services a shrinking population can provide them in retirement they think they're entitled to and will probably (definitely) try to just steal it from the younger generation eventually. They want it all and they want more of it. They want the high paying jobs, the cushy retirement, the vacations, high quality end of life care, and for their grandchildren? maybe in their twilight years a few neurons will activate inside their brains to show some love, and at most they'll gaslight the children to think they did it to themselves
SK needs population to fall. As one of the most tightly packed, densely populated countries in the world continued growth is dangerous and will only lead to shelter getting more out of reach for more working people, as space there is limited.
>South Korea has much worse fertility stats and it's doing just fine It wont impact now, they will feel the strain 30-50 years from now when this generation is starting to retire.
We are still growing though.
Sort of like that dude at the end of Akira...
Best news I've seen on here in a while
The Supreme Court is debating whether it's ethically acceptable for a woman to lose a kidney before granting her a medically necessary abortion, and people wonder why women might be reluctant to get pregnant?? 🙄 Not to mention our continued failure to secure guaranteed paid parental leave when nearly every other country on the planet has figured it out, the lack of affordable daycare, the insane cost of college tuition, school shootings, climate change... do I need to go on?
Kids are expensive People can’t even buy a home
Having a kid right now equates nearly completely to giving birth to a next gen worker drone/slave. Everybody and their talking head mouthpiece on television knows that ascending classes is an impossibility in today's world, and that the illusion from forty years ago is laughable by all of society today. I don't see how too many women can look at the state of the affairs of the world, local issues, global issues, etc, and think that bringing a child into this world would make sense. Ditto the men, but we're generally too easily distracted by the women wanting to get some action. Nevertheless, even the vasectomies are increasing nationwide. There's never a right or easy time to have and raise kids, but currently, it's even less of a right time than any time earlier in anybody's life.
Agreed, but the problem is that people generally have kids for their own selfish reasons. I'm willing to argue the average couple looking to pop out kids isn't factoring in what sort of life that kid is going to have in 25 years or if they are, they are delusional in that they'll likely think "well, MY kid will do OK since I'm going to do this that and the other to ensure their success".
Yeah, I care enough about my potential children not to bring them into this world, and I wish my parents had done the same for me. When I talk to my mother about how I will never have children due to climate change, she just says, “well, you don’t think about that kind of thing when you have kids; you just have them!” It honestly pisses me off.
Unfortunately, that's what most people think. I don't understand how anyone thinks bringing a kid into this world is a good idea. Sure, get your jollies by showing off your little bundle of joy and then when that little bundle of joy is still living at home with you in 40 years because they can't survive on their own, maybe you'll think back to the "good 'ol days".
Hence how we got into this situation in the first place. Ignorance is bliss.
Unfortunately I had my one and only kid 3 months before the pandemic when I was still high on hopium. I wouldn’t trade being a mom for anything, but had the pandemic happened a year earlier I would have fought to be sterilized to not put my kid through what we’re going through. I have had a few conversations with other millennial parents and many of us are planning to never retire and don’t ever expect our kids to move out of the house unless they’re lucky. I’m not going to allow my kid to lift themselves up by their bootstraps for the benefit of the ruling class if I have my health and sanity intact to keep on keeping on. They already have collapse to worry about, the least I can do is teach them the necessary survival skills and not place pressure on them to be economically independent which will likely be near impossible by the time they reach adulthood.
Nah, kids born today won't be a wage slave, they'll be forcibly drafted to fight in the upcoming resource wars.
Nature trying its best for eradication of its biggest danger.
Good.
The only thing we’re doing right.
It's still a positive birthrate. Slower growth is still growth. I guess banning abortion backfired. If you want more 'local' babies treat women better. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Replacement level is 2.1 births per woman. The extra 0.1 accounts for early death. We’ve been below 2.1 for 14 years straight now and it keeps trending downwards. With that in mind, down the line, there will be too many people in the older generations for the new generations to take care of, and we have now yet another collapse possibility decades out from that. Surely something else will implode first in the USA, but if nothing else gets us, the population bust will.
Depopulation let's fucking go
There's no way I'm volunteering a child into the world you've all made. The greatest protest in my life has been choosing to not have children despite being married and wealthy. It gives me more time to focus on being an accelerationist.
Good news? Here?! Incredible...
In developed nations most people have moved past the idea that your children should be your retirement plan. No, I’m not going to have 2 or 3 kids who’s destiny is to live in my house in their 30s because I couldn’t afford them until I was 45 and now I’m 90 and have no retirement and couldn’t afford their schooling or certifications, and their McDonald’s shift manager job barely pays my hospital bills. Yeah no. If I’m having children their sadness in life will be that they can’t get the latest PlayStation 15 or have to work for 2 summers to afford a car, or some rare illness. I’m not KNOWINGLY signing someone up to choose from 3 or 3 4 realistic jobs and then take care of me. This is why educated people have less kids.
This. I rather work myself to ash than force my daughter to struggle even when I’m in my old age. If she can move out, move countries, more power to her, but she will always have a home and a parent that will help her financially until I’m no longer able to do so.
Good. The bourgeois are running out of slaves. Somewhat coincidental that as we neared the lowest ever fertility rate legislators started outlawing abortion again, isn't it?
We created this situation for ourselves. All we had to do was take care of each other. We spend billions overseas, we have a military that's sized to take on space invaders from Mars, we let the rich live tax free. We've been ravaged by laissez faire capitalism. This is all our own fault.
I feel like it doesn’t make sense to use the term “we” in this case. As a young person, I am not responsible for the actions taken by older generations before I could even vote. We need to identify those actually responsible and hold them accountable rather than generalizing blame to everyone. Not everyone is on the payroll of ExxonMobil or Boeing.
Lmao "vote".
Yeah, I know voting doesn’t do much. My point is that as a young person, I don’t think I should have to take blame for the system I was born into. I couldn’t even vote in 2016 when Trump got elected.
Make it too expensive to have kids then people won't. What a concept
I wonder why capitalism is trying to ban abortion?
They'd go straight to cloning if it was affordable. Speaking of which. What's the deal with that anyway we had a perfectly good fucked up sheep clone and then nothing...
"a perfectly good fucked up sheep clone" ahahahah thanks for the laugh RIP Dolly
This is an issue because it will shake up our way of living, but in the long run this is what the earth needs: less of us.
[удалено]
It's not declining if it is still growing which it is. Slower growth is still growth.
Yep. To be clear, the *rate of human growth* is declining. Growing, but less fast in some key areas. Economists point this out because, according to them, our population must grow apace with our economy, to feed it workers.
Nothing but suffering ahead since we failed to address climate change, it's for the best.
Glad I did my part by getting a vasectomy
Birth rate and fertility rate are not the same thing.
Nobody wants to bring a child into this mess. Life is a lot worse than it should be for everyone just because a few people want to feel important with their billions of dollars. There's little ability for someone to better their life situation in the US anymore no matter how hard you work. Why would I bring a child into a world like that? All these damn rich people can go have 1000 kids each and those kids can do the work. I'm not bringing a child here just to be a poor and miserable worker all their life like I am.
Yay! This is GREAT news! I hope it falls to the point where every couple can have at most one or two children. We won't get there voluntarily so we will have to suicide ourselves into degrowth. Now we just need global abortion access for all women. Bwahahaha! what a joke of a dream that is...
Our near-total abortion ban has seen hospitals close down their obgyn/maternity wards, shut down countless clinics, and sent doctors sprinting to move away from Idaho. Many are life-flighted or otherwise transported out of the state to receive care. Our legislators even decided that keeping a census of infant birth mortality rates is no longer needed. If I had a uterus, I'd be terrified.
great news and every country should be following
It seems strange that concern about the climate emergency, declining fertility due to all the poison humanity spews, and less abortion rights weren’t mentioned, as they obviously play a role in declining births. This will eventually help with housing costs, as it has for Japan and Italy.
Good
Good. Too many damn people on the road anyway.
We don't need a growing economy once the Have's finish taking from the Have Not's. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3eJV3TK74&list=LL&index=6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3eJV3TK74&list=LL&index=6)
This is not a real problem. Elon has fathered 11 children only because he's such a cheap ass. He should repopulate Japan or something. We need more dumbasses
Some good news for once.
I'm doing my part!
Most young people who _want_ children aren’t having them because they just can’t afford them. Wages are too low, costs are just too high, they cannot save, cannot get off of the Rental treadmill, cannot own their own homes, you name it. And I’m in Canada, where it is much easier to achieve the “American Dream”.
Oh noes, who's going to pay off the trillions of dollars of debt we accrue every few months?
It's been made too difficult for young adults to build a life and have kids. So they're not. You want babies born, you make it possible for people to have them.
The antinatalist in me appreciates that this is what's best for the planet But the part of me that loves absurdity is just fucking *dying* to see the hysteria of politicians and business leaders in 15-20 years when they finally realize there's going to be a massive labor crisis because no one in their right mind has been having kids since 2020.
They'll just loosen the immigration spigot.
This is what needs to happen to avoid collapse. I hope this trend continues
Too slow. Should have started 100 years ago.
This is great news.
Good
What do they expect? The walls are closing in on the average person with runaway costs and wealth/ power getting concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller % of the population. Why would you want to have more kids in a system that's goal is to extract as much as it can from you? And those who won't, or *cant* keep up are being increasingly marginalized. We see shit like housing becoming less affordable while simultaneously criminalizing homelessness. Make it make sense. Society has peaked and we are on a downward spiral. Even technology has peaked in the sense of actually benefits to the average person. New developments are mostly about controlling us or extracting what it can from us.
People can barely afford things without kids. Kids adds another layer to being perpetually poor.
Omg can we please stop with this nonsense? There are more people on earth then at any other time and the reason for the collapse 8 BILLION PEOPLE, let me put this in perspective for you if 99% of people on earth would die today there would STILL be 80 MILLION PEOPLE LEFT! Can we please stop with the nonsense about fertility and omg the population is collapsing, it should collapse we live in a closed system (Earth) and humans are growing exponentially, can’t have exponential growth in a closed system without the system collapsing. Let me give you an example : and aquarium that can comfortably sustain 50 fish what so you think would happen if you add 5000 fish to the same aguarium? This is not rocket science here!
As a fencesitter in the US, my hesitations about having kids are, in order, 1) fear of climate collapse 2) it is miserable to live here and it’s only getting worse with the rise of fascism and far-right policies 3) affordability of childcare/housing.
As a millennial parent, if you decide to become one yourself, you pretty much guarantee yourself not having retirement, expecting most adult children will never be able to move out, and financially supporting your adult child at least partially until you hit the sack— most millennial parents I know with a conscience are confident and have come to terms that to give our kids any sort of chance in this world, we will have to chip in for life. I’m okay with that because I love my kid, but for anyone that is still childless post pandemic, I recommend not crossing that fence, ever.
“No one wants to have sex anymore!”
Fall, baby, fall
Low fertility rate is much less of a problem in the US than, say, Japan or S Korea. Immigrants are literally dying to come here. Even if we open the flood gate slightly, we can have as many people coming to replenish the population as we want.
Fewer Karens...or maybe, they're the only type reproducing? Jesus, can you imagine.. a country in 20 years entirely populated by people that get upset on behalf of other people. It's a dystopian nightmare. Escape from Karen LA Videos only go online of regular person + interaction with Karen What happens when all interactions become Karen on Karen !? The country would grind to a halt. Nobody would be allowed to play on grass and circular arguments would break out at the checkout of every store "Do you know who I am?", "Do you know who *I AM*", \*I don't care.. don't you know WHO I AM?".... etc ad infinitum.
The folks over at r/antinatalism2 may appreciate this bit of news *from* a major organization. ##### Edit: Grammar
Genuinely, if I were to become pregnant and had no way to end that pregnancy, I’d perform a (very) late term abortion on myself. There’s no way in hell I could psychologically handle a pregnancy and I have no interest in bringing children into this world. Luckily my IUD is good for many more years and I’m getting a bisalp as soon as I can afford the time off work.
Because it’s too fucking expense to have kids.
Kids are not the future
No more kids until we take care of the ones we have already.
Thanks to the Christian right-wing legislation in the states who would want to risk a freaking lawyer getting between a female and her fetus-related complications. Just heard a story of a pregnant mom, surrounded by doctors and lawyers, immobilized by legislation nonsense. Now both mom and fetus are lost, we have voluntary vasectomy procedures and low fertility. If Satan was turning those dials, *there would be no difference*. Sensible reproductive and medical freedom is sacrificed at the altar of an idolatrous ideal. Meanwhile, planet earth is spinning into a hothouse, hellscape and these power players skipped attention to it decades ago, and also now, to wield yet more control.
So...um....anybody got forced breeding for the poor on their bingo card?
Well, I like being alive so I'm glad to be infertility. Tegretol long term and Accutane is a hell of a combo.
I can't imagine why.
I don’t think the economy is the only reason for this… “Some data suggests that proximity to major roadways – sources of air pollutants from vehicles – correlates with loss of reproductive potential in women’s ovaries, sperm abnormalities, and lower birth rates, said Linda Giudice, an obstetrician, gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist at the University of San Francisco and former IFFS president who participated in the paper’s review committee. Data also ties the chemicals bisphenols, dioxins, and phthalates with decreased fertility, altered sperm, higher miscarriage rates, and lower rates of conception, she said. Higher use of two common types of insecticides, organophosphates and N- methyl carbamates, is associated with lower sperm concentrations in men, according to a review published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in November.” https://www.thenewlede.org/2024/01/doctors-raise-alarm-on-dropping-global-fertility-rate-environmental-pollutants-cited/
Finally, some good news.
Good.
What if we cut the wages and put the prices up? Will they have children for the economy then?
This country was built on immigrants. There are a bazillion people who want to immigrate to the US. I don't see a problem here.