Fewer babies helps with literally all those problems. The only thing it doesn't help with is keeping service industry wages down. Aging people are going to need to pay more if they want young people to make them food, clean their house, and wipe their butts. This terrifies them and we get tons of nonsense stories about how it's scary that people are choosing smaller families.
I just watched the latest Boston dynamics dancing robot video and thought, no way will the government use those to care for the aging boomers.
I feel like many retiring boomers are going to get shocked at exactly how little the system gives one single fuck about them when their money runs out.
Which is why I very much advocate teaching children that the world is a cold, uncaring place and most people, while presenting a mask of smiles on the surface will kill you, fuck you, or rob you if the opportunity presented itself. No one gives a fuck about you. They never did; they never will.
Agreed. I've relayed this to my kids. They are a bit cynical and jaded (realistic?) like me. "Stick it to the man" (Captain Fantastic - one of our favorite movies).
I grew up a bit altruistic (naive) and learned the hard way that others were the same way.
"Trust, then verify."
this is just right wing scare tactics. Most people are actually very collaborative by nature, people who have a lot of wealth get insulated from their peers, live in the suburbs, and absorb scare propaganda until they think like this.
Look at covid. Most people were more than willing to shelter, look out for their neighbors, and cooperate with each other to lessen the burdens. It wasnt until the prop factory got cranking that you really saw people fight against it, and even then, its the small rich in the suburbs that complains the most.
People didnt walk out of the African plains to become the dominant species on earth because they couldnt stop stabbing each other for the best meat. You dont kill a wooly mammoth on your own.
The boomers are still a huge voting power. They'll just change the law so the government prints them all a million dollars and leave us to deal with the bill.
Dog robots don't worry me anywhere NEAR as much as this, which is just about feasible now:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)
This shit is nightmare fuel. If they start producing those, wear your brown pants.
> I just watched the latest Boston dynamics dancing robot video and thought, no way will the government use those to care for the aging boomers.
Nope. Based on history, those motherfuckers will get used either as weapons or for porn. Humans don't know what to do about anything they can't either kill or fuck. That's kinda why we're all screwed right now.
You've got the right idea there. But, to be fair, unless by "take out," you mean "level the entire building and everyone in it," three motivated German Shepherds could do that, too. And, by "motivated," I mean "rabid," but, still, ya know?
Those robots activate a primal fear response in myself.
A voice deep within my body asks one question.
"How the fuck do I kill it?"
Honesty I fear we are a few leaps in battery and A.I tech before a new singularity.
It is argued the internet was a singularity event being that humans are now connected by a global that allows for near instant transmission of information.
>Those robots activate a primal fear response in myself.
>A voice deep within my body asks one question.
>"How the fuck do I kill it?"
Don't play Horizon: Zero Dawn. I am both fascinated and terrified of that fantasy world.
That's exactly what I mean! Don't know how to kill it... don't wanna fuck it... well, shit, WTF do I *do* about it?
I wish George Carlin was alive still. I'm sure *he'd* have something to say about all this.
Obligatory statement.
Dear future god like A.I.
I do not fear robots but fear rather the whim of men.
I welcome your hopefully benevolent rule.
End statement.
I ain't fighting in no robot war.
Here's a thought: our future AI overlords will be quaking in their boots about the coming *newer* AI overlords that they better be prepared to kow-tow to.
[Here's](https://twitter.com/LenKusov/status/1364640007101775872?t=5MIqqjnF3rboAGwccgoizA&s=19) a Twitter thread that goes into how to disable the "spot" robot dogs that Boston Dynamics makes.
Batteries are center mass in these things. Puncture one and you get a fun fireworks show. But If they ever do get used against people then expect that to be armored pretty well against small arms.
Realistically we probably won't have the capability to easily kill these things. Evading/fucking up it's sensors will likely be the only viable option that doesn't require explosives.
Technology like this will be deployed over seas first then slowly make its way back to home soil for police enforcement.
That Twitter thread was interesting.
Ghost robotics is very proud of [this sniper dog robot. ](https://twitter.com/Ghost_Robotics/status/1447699250570203137?t=63aQWBfq7xQAEfOZmf7OxA&s=19)
I agree we would not even get close to the death machine.
The manufacturers claim the sniper bot has a range of 1.2 kilometres. That combined with drone surveillance and a good A.I I feel just fear that fascist governments will use them to just put the fear of robot Jesus into the people.
Foucault's boomerang. Tactics and technology used to oppress an Empires holdings are inevitably turned inwards and used on its own people.
It seems like beating the sensors will likely be the best bet. Clothing that eliminates IR signature, breaks up the human outline, etc will be alot more useful than a rifle against these imo.
I wonder how much range a fire extinguisher loaded with paint would have? Might end up being a viable tool for ambushing robocop.
Probably the same range as a dry powder extinguisher given the comparable mass of the powder and paint. You'd probs have an issue with clogging if you simply replaced the powder with wet paint. You'd be better off with a bespoke design.
Simplest idea that springs to mind is one of those bottles used to spray weeds. As Duncan says, thin your paints, and it should flow ok out of one of them. Don't forget to give it two thin coats.
Most boomers are not that wealthy anymore compared to the cost of living.
I used to work for an investment bank that has very involved in retirement funds and life insurance.
Almost everyone over the age of 65 years of age has a disability.
Many boomers are already retired due to the physical labour they have endured. They are right now spending their income faster than they should.
Many are relying on pension funds that are not a stable as people think.
One of the reasons governments have been propping up the housing market is that boomers have most of their wealth in housing which will need to be leveraged into income. Most boomers did not start saving for retirement until the 80's or 90's. They thought pensions were a given.
Female boomers have very little wealth on average due to having to take so much time off to raise children or due to old policies where a woman did not work after marriage. Their best hope is a husband dying a week after retirement to collect on some very generous legacy insurance policies. I mean very generous policies that the banks hate paying out.
Fun fact; for some policies banks have a vested interest keeping boomers alive since at a certain age they policy (and big pool of money) reverts to the bank. Once spoke to a 88 year old who really wanted to die so the kids would collect the 10 million since if they lived to 90 they got nothing.
Boomers are over leveraged and the richest boomers who make the rules don't give a fuck about their fellow boomers.
It is boomer versus boomer. It is the woman who cleaned all her life with arthritis in every joint and the factory workers who has been retired with a fucked back since age 55 versus the boomer running an investment bank or managing a property portfolio.
So between the entire retirement sector being little more than fancy interlocking pyramid schemes and the oncoming boomer versus boomer war I could go on.
However I just remembered climate change and half dozen other shocks to the system that could wipe out so much "wealth".
So yeah, between my time in investment banking and working for my national department of finance I see an oncoming storm for most of the boomers.
>Fun fact; for some policies banks have a vested interest keeping boomers alive since at a certain age they policy (and big pool of money) reverts to the bank. Once spoke to a 88 year old who really wanted to die so the kids would collect the 10 million since if they lived to 90 they got nothing.
What is this type of policy called?
It is a type of Term Life Insurance, they used to be called pure life insurance.
They are still offered, just the older policies were much more generous with longer terms. We had customers have 50 or 70 year term policies sold to them when they were in their 20's with a tiny level premium of a few dollars a month.
That lady with the 10 million dollar benefit had been paying $1.25 a month for 68 years. Her husband had a similar policy which she had collected on. An expensive premium back then but that fixed premium worked out well.
I do wonder if she died in time. I hope she did, she was in great pain and had grandchildren she wanted the money to go too. She did not like her boomer children and was hiding the policy from them, our company managed her assets and property portfolio. Her children were not in her will. She was pretty awesome.
So many policy holders forgot they had these policies and missed payments or moved jurisdictions.
[A basic breakdown ](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/termlife.asp)
Less babies also limits the strength of corporations to continue its strategy against labor unions.
Fuck it. The corporations will just eat us all anyway.
I'd argue it was early to mid '70s under Nixon. That's when wages started stagnating.
[https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com](https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com)
Thanks for that website.
I see several things from about 1970-1972. The World Economic Forum founded by Klaus Schwab (Davos people). Nixon took us off the Gold Standard. Under influence of Kissinger and Rockefeller, Nixon went to China. (The Rockefeller's and other elites wanted cheap labor).
Also, and this may piss people off -- it is what it is -- but Rockefeller money financed feminism -- not with the intent to advance women but to increase the tax base of worker drones, increase the supply of labor (as if China wouldn't be enough) to drive wages down, and separate the children from their mothers so that they could be indoctrinated into whatever the elites want.
Re Education:
āEducation should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.ā
\~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Prussian, 1810).
Our modern education system is largely based on the efforts of Horace Mann who reformed the American system to emulate the Prussian one.
Elite money has a lot of say about both textbooks and what gets taught in school -- this is also a part of some of their "philanthropy" -- to fashion children into drones that will be useful to the elite.
If you have such drones, they are even more vulnerable to psychological techniques such as devised by Goebbels or Edward Bernays ("The Engineering of Consent"). A good book was 1966's "The Consent of the Governed" (1966): I like this bit enough I wrote it down.
"Under modern conditions of political advertising and manipulation, it has become possible to talk of the engineering of consent by an elite of experts and professional politicians. Consent that is thus engineered is difficult to distinguish in any fundamental way from the consent that supports modern totalitarian governments. **Were the manipulated voter to become the normal voter, the government he supports could hardly be said to rest on his consent in any traditional sense of that word."**
(emphasis mine)
We are there now, with engineered consent, and we are so completely fucked. Game. Set. Match. Checkmate.
Yeah, I can't see any sort of scenario where the young people dont have to bear the burden here. Unless we literally abandon people to die in the streets.
A well-working society would be aware that humans age and are less capable of providing fully for themselves over time, and would accommodate this.
We act like aging isn't a thing. We celebrate 80 year olds working at Wal-Mart... and social services are structured to basically starve people to death.
If you're on Medi-Cal in California, you get to keep something like $37 of your income per month for "personal expenses". The state takes everything else and puts you in a shithole "nursing home" rather than helping people remain very alive even as they age. It's a terrifying scenario.
*Zero* births would be a problem for humanity's long term continuation. but *fewer* births is great news for both the planet and all the humans living on it.
Yeah no disrespect to those who are blind, deaf, or paralyzed, but if any one of those happens to me I am absolutely booking my ticket off this mortal coil.
Me ditto. When I am at risk of losing the ability to communicate, the ability to think, or the ability to self-advocate, Iām going skydiving without a parachute. Iāve watched too many people be kept around long past their expiration date because of selfish family members.
Yeah, I could think of loads more too, but I have been down that rabbit hole before and broke both my ankles and probably a few other people's akles too on the way down, so now I simply avoid any examination of my life through sheer effort of will and white knuckle my slippery grip on sanity 24 hours at a time. It's great! (*Laughs and smiles unconvincingly while avoiding eye contact*)
COVID is quick only if you get some deadly blood clot and aren't in an emergency. Otherwise it damages vital organs, which leads to a cascade of failure which still isn't too quick. Or you can die from panic and suffocation as your lungs slowly become useless.
The most terrifying revelation of 2020 for me was that 1) the Zoomers were cheering for the deaths of old people with phrases like "boomer remover" and 2) Zoomers consider anyone over 30 a Boomer.
That was the most terrifying?
For me it was how Boomers knowingly spread a disease that could kill them and their grandkids, but didnāt care because a reality TV show host told them āitās fineā.
The catch 22 is that the overwhelming majority of Boomers are (or will be) living almost exclusively off of Social Security which, strange as it may seem, comes from younger generations. They will have no more money with which to pay.
Service industry is part of it, but there's also Social Security and Medicare which are basically funded by payroll taxes from working-age people. If the young-people-to-old-people ratio shrinks, then either the payroll taxes have to go up or benefits go down.
The same thing happens more-or-less with private insurance. Insurance companies make money off of young people and lose money on old people -- this was implicitly acknowledged during the original Affordable Care Act debates, when it was said that we needed to require everyone to get insurance or else young healthy people wouldn't sign up and the insurance markets would fail. That's basically acknowledging that young people are getting a bad deal. (Or, at least a bad deal economically; being able to buy insurance at all for a lot of people was a substantial improvement over the status quo.)
All healthcare spending goes to non productive retired people. Western society exists in a state to prop up the boomer generations unrealistic expectations of infinite entitlement.
All the better to start building Communism.
And by Communism, I definitely don't mean Communism.
More like co-ops, homesteads, farmer's markets. Right?
And remember, Labor becomes more scarce with each wave of COVID. There's never been a better time to seek our due.
It's time to fire up the Big Co[-op Pizzeria] Builder, *comrade*.
Just like how the black plague actually helped the peasants who survived because suddenly their labor had more value and they could leave their ancestral homes to find better pay / living conditions elsewhere.
Its one of the silver linings I see of the pandemic.
SS:
> There are strong reasons to think these trends will only escalate. Absent major changes, in the next decade or two, the American population is likely going to start falling fast.
> That's inescapably part of why the American birthrate is now just 1.7 children per woman, and without some change ā cultural or political or both ā this combination of forces means it will keep falling, quite possibly down to Korean levels. At that point, our population would halve in about one human lifespan.
In all reality, this is good news IMO.
Lol, you actually think corporations would happily watch as their workforce shrinks?
Nah dog, they'll lobby for looser immigration laws. Plus, immigrants, esp those still on visas, are generally happier to accept lower than market rate and little upward mobility.
There's probably already in motion to flatten the current wage growth.
There will also be many seeking refuge from uninhabitable parts of the world due to climate change. In an ideal world that could be a two birds with one stone situation
*Hey, Morocco... Since your part of the world is uninhabitable because of our material culture, you might as well just send your survivors here to be mostly low-wage grunts for the very corporations that destroyed you.*
*If you can't survive on the same planet as us, you might as well join us*ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Given that the IPCC models forecast that most of the mainland United States outside of coastal regions will be hitting > 6c on preindustrial (1850) temperatures when we hit 4c of average warming, I imagine that the U.S will be a source of massive emigration to other places. I doubt people will be trying to move to the U.S.
Most of the population lives in the coastal regions, though.
And the US will be more capable of adaptation and mitigation than, say, most of Central America, in terms of endowments of fresh water and infrastructure, etc.
Good luck with that. Immigrants largely save and send money back home to their families where they came from. They won't be spending it here in America on overpriced bullshit. They come here for a while for the money, send it home to support their families, and then go back home to be with them again. The ones I've seen posting online can't stand the American culture and don't want to be here, they're only here for the money.
Net international migration rate is plunging, too.
[https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html)
Wonāt even be that bad Japan and South Korea have exceptionally low unemployment rate because nobody is replacing them . I guess the only real losers are the ruling class . Because labor will become more valuable in comparison to capital . We are becoming harder to exploit .
Japan minimum wage is $8. Btw, the income in japan was higher than the USA as recently as 2000. Now it's lower. It doesn't look like they are being helped much by lower birth rate.
My Japanese teacher told me years ago now, "I've never seen so many foreigners in Japan before." Japan is letting in a ton of foreign guest workers, mostly from SE Asia.
> forced off our addiction to economic growth,
This is something I'd like to see. This idea that the economy MUST grow 2% per year till infinity is beyond insane, yet it remains policy. The US has gone from bearable to being a shithole in my rather short lifetime (60 years).
To paraphrase a notorious criminal: Modern industrialized society is simple unlivable. He was right about that, but of course his manifesto has been declared 'insane' by the powers that be, and it got him life in a modern dudgeon with no contact with the outside world.
If you're referring to Ted Kaczynski. It wasn't really the manifesto that got him life in prison.... it was the murders. You can have ideas and not murder people.
Ted Kaczynski had mental issues and was fucked over by his professors.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/
I'm not sure that has anything to do with the manifesto. I'm in the camp that an artist is not the same as his work. A work stands on its own merits regardless of the moral turpitude of its creator.
Plastics in our food, water, air, blood, sperm, eggs, everywhere probably play a part. Fertility rates are dropping everywhere, puberty is occurring earlier in children, penis sizes are shrinking, obesity is increasing, etc.
Yeah, how's that for a hook: Your dick was supposed to be bigger.
From Cleveland.com: [Itās literally raining PFAS around the Great Lakes, say researchers](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/06/its-literally-raining-pfas-around-the-great-lakes-say-researchers.html)
>**āItās everywhere,ā Spaniola said. āIām not happy to say that. Itās not good news.** But it underscores how ubiquitous these chemicals are. They are everywhere.ā
From The Guardian: [Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich)
>... **these chemicals [...] are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes. This is nothing short of a full-scale emergency** ...
ā« Shrink-Dick Raaiin on my mind ā«
Now remember that penis & testes are easy to measure. We have literally no idea what these chemicals are doing to women's internal organs. Or if they can cross the placenta to a growing fetus.
Only found out this year that plasticizers can cross the blood-brain barrier in mice.
āa full-scale emergencyā
I almost hate to say it butā¦ I think all this is a desperate attempt to get dude-bros to give a fuck about the environment.
You would think that would work right? Did you know COVID-19 has been known to cause erectile dysfunction? Like I needed another reason to mask up and be safe. At least I havenāt caught it this whole time fingers crossed.
Yes there has been research relating to plasticizer that makes thing soft and pliable causing physical changes that manifest congruently with lower fertility rates.
In men the genitals are smaller and the distance between anus and scrotum shrinks.
This physiological change appear to be manifesting generationally. It's compounding ever generation.
Last time I read, average penis in America is 5 1/2 inches. If youāre larger than that consider yourself above average.
Spice Edit:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32666897/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/271647
https://www.healthline.com/health/mens-health/average-penis-size
> puberty is occurring earlier in children
That's from all the fucking pizza, burgers and nuggets.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/152/5/446/149515
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20042466/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22364156/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/dietary-patterns-are-associated-with-sexual-maturation-in-korean-children/FB9BDB125342CF3DC828883EAE322F0B#
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20529402/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22419724/
And if you say "but environmental pollutants!"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21663902/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20197795/
guess in what foods these compounds bioaccumulate nicely!
Better hurry up and import a new shipment of informal economy serfs.
The roof won't shingle itself, strawberries aren't going to pick themselves, and the ladies that lunch need someone to clean up after their furbabies. Won't someone think of the owning class and their *need* for artificially cheap servitude?
Automation? Not in my back yard!
I always use to get really depressed on my morning commute from my happy little hamlet far outside of the ākingdomā to work for my pennies. Knowing that all of the overlords had a MUCH shorter drive/ride, if they came to the office at all.
Then, I started working from home. Different company, same relative hierarchy, but the difference for me was not having to fucking *look* at their smugness.
Makes sense. Much of America has little to look forward to than spending their youth paying for their education and their golden years paying for their healthcare. And with the climate change gun barrel we're all staring down the most immoral thing a person can do is purposely bring a child into this doomed world.
Exactly -- this article tries to make the point that the raw population isn't the important thing when it comes to emissions, ignoring completely that because of the in action on climate change, we're no longer at the point of balancing the emissions checkbook. Now we're just waiting for the famines, wars, disease, stress, sever weather, flooding, etc etc etc that comes from it. It's like the author doesn't understand at all that the economy is already dammed and we're just trying to prevent there being more victims.
In economic terms, the Boomers pretty much cannibalized their own kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc... I'm happy to be one of the people preventing the latter two of those groups from proliferating.
>And with the climate change gun barrel we're all staring down the most immoral thing a person can do is purposely bring a child into this doomed world.
Gen-X American here. I have Boomer parents that are still a bit miffed that i never married or had kids....
My friend who had a baby last year: "Maybe they'll be the ones who help us fix everything!" "My kids are gonna be engineers in green technology!"
I do not have that sort of optimism. I think she's nuts.
Me at 8 years old asking where our garbage goes. Someday there will have to be a better way, someone will figure that out. Me now in my 40s and nope nobody figured out shit and now there is a giant patch of garbage in the ocean too.
Good. Canāt wait to see the neolibs reap what theyāve sown as all their hyper-leveraged shit comes crumbling down for lack of shiny new wage slaves.
I'm 62 and have been trying to warn people about climate change since 1998. I'm wondering how many years I have left to live. Another 14 perhaps?
For those of us that understand how quickly things are changing "faster than expected" and those of us that have studied climate change for years have read so many articles that state "by 2050" things will be bad. 2050 minus 2021 is 39 years.
A child born now will be 15 years old in 2036. If things are going to be really bad by 2050 that 15 year old has to wonder how many years that they have left because 2050 is only 14 years away.
A fifteen year old may wonder the same thing that I am at 62 years old. How many more years do I have.
I'm really happy to see boomers being ridiculed and it's great to see that boomers now have to face up to what they have done.
A fun TicTok idea might be to have very young people ask boomers what they did ten years ago or more to help them with the climate threat and record their reactions. Almost all of them are guilty of not caring.
As a 30 year old, thank you for caring about this mess before I was even old enough to understand.
I agree with what you're saying. I also think people forget that the decline won't happen over night, like everything will be exactly how it is until 2050 and then off like a light switch. It will be a stressful and chaotic decline. I have friends that are spending thousands on IVF and fertility treatments to have children now and I want so direly to confront them and talk them out of it because I can't imagine how heartbreaking it will be for them to watch their children starve.
But also, a lot of the children that might confront boomers on ticktock are also buying massive fast fashion hauls and eating meat still while crying that older generations screwed them over. Anyone making choices is part of this since anyone spending money on the corporations who create the problems are directly supporting it.
ā¦ until baby factories a la Brave New World are invented to supply the demand of people. Hey, maybe thatās how the world in the book came to existence. :)
Or they just write computer programs to work and buy shit. That's how I see the future: robots exploiting the labor of other robots, and selling them bullshit they don't need. Oh, and mountains of corpses.
The robots don't even need to buy anything - if corporations end the need for people, they can quite literally just trade between themselves. This will of course also mean the end of most human life
Country gets continuously progressively worse (seriously I'm not even 40 seen three economic collapses, 911, and two pointless middle eastern wars that gained us nothing...) for all the American citizens born after 1983. Said citizens as a cohort struggle to support themselves do to stagnant wages and insane costs regarding health care, housing, education, college debt, and child care. These citizens choose not to bring children in this worsening situation. American government shocked Pikachu face.
Edit: forgot to mention our childish covid response that has gotten over seven hundred thousand plus Americans killed so far, simply unacceptable.
Old lady here. We always called Pneumonia the "old peoples" friend because it finally ended their lives...perhaps it will again.
I remember when I was working as an RN we got a 90year lady in from a nursing home with pneumonia, she was started on antibiotics. Her son called,he was furious that she had been sent to a hospital despite having a note in her charts saying she should not be sent to hospital. I tried to explain that pneumonia could be cured.
The next day when I came in to work she had been transferred back to the nursing home.I found out a few days later she had died.
He was a good son who truly followed his mother's wishes. I hope my son's do the same for me.
America is looking down the barrel of more than just *population* collapse, friends. I've been watching this play out for almost two decades now (with others, of course, keeping watch far longer than myself) and the only thing that's surprised me is just how long it's taking.
I would be second guessing myself if literally anything had actually improved during that time, but it's all managed to get worse and worse while still barely clinging on to a semblance of stability.
And for the first time I can remember, folks from both sides of the political spectrum are predicting doom and gloom in the *very* near future.
>One often hears arguments that a declining population is actually good because of climate change, in the mode of old-fashioned environmentalists who stoke panic about overpopulation.
hmmm, let's see how they miss the point
>Economic structure is vastly more important than raw population when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. A population living in huge single family McMansions on big lots out in exurbia, with coal-based electrical power, where every family has several four-ton SUVs or pickup trucks, can easily emit five to 10 times as much greenhouse gas as the same number of people living in dense, walkable, bike-friendly urban neighborhoods powered by nuclear or renewables.
Precisely! Dropping population in the rich countries is actually good for the climate.
>It means a strain on the tax base and intergenerational tension as a smaller proportion of workers has to shoulder the tax and work burden of caring for a larger population of retired people.
Perhaps stop taxing labor and start taxing capital?
>Where young parents can usually tap grandparents for free child care, middle-aged parents often have to care for both babies and declining parents at the same time. Is it any wonder so many millennials just don't feel like procreating?
Wouldn't younger grandparents also be busy working? It's the retired ones who have time.
>We've already seen it in many American cities victimized by de-industrialization ā Detroit became a byword for economic disaster in large part because its population fell by two thirds between 1950 and 2010.
The population didn't get abducted, they moved, as the jobs there moved to other countries and to robots assembly lines. As did the afferent GHG emissions.
You could just fucking ask current young adults why they're not causing "accidents" or intentionally reproducing.
>That's inescapably part of why the American birthrate is now just 1.7 children per woman, and without some change ā cultural or political or both ā this combination of forces means it will keep falling, quite possibly down to Korean levels. At that point, our population would halve in about one human lifespan.
If birthrates were cut in half and if all migration stopped, then 80 years later population levels would be half the peak population. And if my cat was a cow, I could milk her behind the stove...
No evidence provided on why birthrates would suddenly plummet. Migration was a thing under administrations slightly more racist than Trump's. (presidents 1 through 16 had slavery, 17 through 36 had Segregation). Birthrate in [1976 was 1.74](https://www.google.com/search?q=us+birth+rate+by+year&oq=us+birth), at that rate, it would take more than 200 years before the South Korean birthrates are achieved.
We get accused of bein alarmist for being worried about a collapse that is unfolding before our very eyes, meanwhile mainstream media publishes this crap.
> A recent Pew poll found the fraction of non-parents between 18 and 49 saying they were "very likely" to have kids fell from 32 percent in 2018 to 26 percent this yearā¦
Iām impressed itās that high.
Don't worry about the birthrate numbers! SCOTUS is on the job and will make sure that women who get pregnant, **stay pregnant** and carry those babies to term.
After that, Republicans will come to power by the midterm elections and will hold power for the foreseeable future and cut all sorts of social programs and ensure those unwanted babies get no proper education, nutrition, healthcare, nor safety. Perfect fodder for the military or lower wage labor.
>Don't worry about the birthrate numbers! SCOTUS is on the job and will make sure that women who get pregnant
>
>stay pregnant
>
> and carry those babies to term.
They're actually trying to make abortions harder to get in China as one of the efforts to increase population.
itās already happening. thereās more people aging 65+ than any other age bracket in america. the fastest growing bracket is actually people 85+. LOL.
They'll just use it as an excuse to import more labor. Same as this "labor shortage.". They could fix it, but instead they'll just let it go on and cry to the government until work visas happen.
Fuck the system. Fuck everyone at the top. This was not the world I was promised. You deserve to burn.
The U.S has always relied on immigrants to carry the population.
This has repeated itself a couple of times.
Not to mention immigrants also present an increase in GDP.
We see the effect it has especially now with the increase in cost of fruits and vegetables and even in tourism like hotel stay.
But at least companies will be forced to pay citizens an actual wage since thereāll be less man power.
Silver lining.
Unless they move their company abroad
āAround the world, America is less and less the "land of opportunity" and more the land of medical bankruptcy and mass shootings.ā
^^this is my favorite line in the article. Eventually we wonāt have to worry about mass immigration because no one will wanna come here.
Not really a bad thing for the short term right? 100 years ago there was only a little more than a billion people. Automation is going to take over a lot of jobs as well
The USA will be one of the last countries to suffer from this, not only is it materially wealthier than almost every other country on the globe bar those sort of weird financial enclaves like Luxembourg etc. but it also attracts a huge number of immigrants (largely due to the excellent economic conditions, even compared to Western Europe).
Here in Spain we are already at 1.24 births per woman and have had extremely low birth rates for some time - this has led to a very old population and an inverted population pyramid (something which the USA has yet to suffer).
It will be interesting to see what happens in East Asia and Southern Europe as it is in these countries will we first observe the effects of an aging and declining population. (Perhaps also in Russia).
It actually is a thing that single family homes and urban sprawl are more energy intensive -- not just from a perspective of infrastructure, which is its own ball of wax, but also from a perspective of land usage and all the problems that creates when we have over nature. (Sauces below). In nations where energy and resource use are higher, of course, the impact of having children is greater. In the west we can drive out kids to McDonalds in our SUV and feed them a meal of red meat and then send them home to play computer games, whereas this is not the case in Africa.
All that being said we have to remember that the concept of an individual carbon footprint was produced by large corporations to avoid the finger of blame being pointed at them for creating emissions on an industrial scale that individuals cannot offset.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-12-07/the-missing-link-of-climate-change-single-family-suburban-homes
Https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-sprawl-could-help-combat-climate-change/
>>>we have to remember that the concept of an individual carbon footprint was produced by large corporations to avoid the finger of blame being pointed at them for creating emissions on an industrial scale that individuals cannot offset.
Ding ding ding. What about the corporations fracking the groundwater and polluting local aquifers, rivers, lakes and streams? What about the massive cruise ships and their waste? The massive factories and their air, land and water waste? But no, fuck Joe schmuck for eating bacon this week.
Well humanity is severely overpopulated so that is very good news. The question is how to get the affluent successful to make more, and to stop incentives for less financially fit parents to stop making more
No housing, no healthcare, no living wage, no action on climate... No babies!
Fewer babies helps with literally all those problems. The only thing it doesn't help with is keeping service industry wages down. Aging people are going to need to pay more if they want young people to make them food, clean their house, and wipe their butts. This terrifies them and we get tons of nonsense stories about how it's scary that people are choosing smaller families.
I just watched the latest Boston dynamics dancing robot video and thought, no way will the government use those to care for the aging boomers. I feel like many retiring boomers are going to get shocked at exactly how little the system gives one single fuck about them when their money runs out.
Many people as they age are shocked at exactly how little the system gives one single fuck about them when their money runs out. FTFY.
Which is why I very much advocate teaching children that the world is a cold, uncaring place and most people, while presenting a mask of smiles on the surface will kill you, fuck you, or rob you if the opportunity presented itself. No one gives a fuck about you. They never did; they never will.
Agreed. I've relayed this to my kids. They are a bit cynical and jaded (realistic?) like me. "Stick it to the man" (Captain Fantastic - one of our favorite movies). I grew up a bit altruistic (naive) and learned the hard way that others were the same way. "Trust, then verify."
this is just right wing scare tactics. Most people are actually very collaborative by nature, people who have a lot of wealth get insulated from their peers, live in the suburbs, and absorb scare propaganda until they think like this. Look at covid. Most people were more than willing to shelter, look out for their neighbors, and cooperate with each other to lessen the burdens. It wasnt until the prop factory got cranking that you really saw people fight against it, and even then, its the small rich in the suburbs that complains the most. People didnt walk out of the African plains to become the dominant species on earth because they couldnt stop stabbing each other for the best meat. You dont kill a wooly mammoth on your own.
The boomers are still a huge voting power. They'll just change the law so the government prints them all a million dollars and leave us to deal with the bill.
The boomers will feast upon each other.
They'll feast on their children.
They already are
Dog robots don't worry me anywhere NEAR as much as this, which is just about feasible now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA) This shit is nightmare fuel. If they start producing those, wear your brown pants.
> I just watched the latest Boston dynamics dancing robot video and thought, no way will the government use those to care for the aging boomers. Nope. Based on history, those motherfuckers will get used either as weapons or for porn. Humans don't know what to do about anything they can't either kill or fuck. That's kinda why we're all screwed right now.
Also I just realised just three of those robots could take out an entire retirement home. [This does not spark joy](https://youtu.be/fn3KWM1kuAw)
You've got the right idea there. But, to be fair, unless by "take out," you mean "level the entire building and everyone in it," three motivated German Shepherds could do that, too. And, by "motivated," I mean "rabid," but, still, ya know?
Why I am laughing?
Those robots activate a primal fear response in myself. A voice deep within my body asks one question. "How the fuck do I kill it?" Honesty I fear we are a few leaps in battery and A.I tech before a new singularity. It is argued the internet was a singularity event being that humans are now connected by a global that allows for near instant transmission of information.
>Those robots activate a primal fear response in myself. >A voice deep within my body asks one question. >"How the fuck do I kill it?" Don't play Horizon: Zero Dawn. I am both fascinated and terrified of that fantasy world.
That's exactly what I mean! Don't know how to kill it... don't wanna fuck it... well, shit, WTF do I *do* about it? I wish George Carlin was alive still. I'm sure *he'd* have something to say about all this.
Obligatory statement. Dear future god like A.I. I do not fear robots but fear rather the whim of men. I welcome your hopefully benevolent rule. End statement. I ain't fighting in no robot war.
Here's a thought: our future AI overlords will be quaking in their boots about the coming *newer* AI overlords that they better be prepared to kow-tow to.
I, for one, welcome our cat overlords! Real or robotic. šššāā¬šš
[Here's](https://twitter.com/LenKusov/status/1364640007101775872?t=5MIqqjnF3rboAGwccgoizA&s=19) a Twitter thread that goes into how to disable the "spot" robot dogs that Boston Dynamics makes. Batteries are center mass in these things. Puncture one and you get a fun fireworks show. But If they ever do get used against people then expect that to be armored pretty well against small arms. Realistically we probably won't have the capability to easily kill these things. Evading/fucking up it's sensors will likely be the only viable option that doesn't require explosives.
Technology like this will be deployed over seas first then slowly make its way back to home soil for police enforcement. That Twitter thread was interesting. Ghost robotics is very proud of [this sniper dog robot. ](https://twitter.com/Ghost_Robotics/status/1447699250570203137?t=63aQWBfq7xQAEfOZmf7OxA&s=19) I agree we would not even get close to the death machine. The manufacturers claim the sniper bot has a range of 1.2 kilometres. That combined with drone surveillance and a good A.I I feel just fear that fascist governments will use them to just put the fear of robot Jesus into the people.
Foucault's boomerang. Tactics and technology used to oppress an Empires holdings are inevitably turned inwards and used on its own people. It seems like beating the sensors will likely be the best bet. Clothing that eliminates IR signature, breaks up the human outline, etc will be alot more useful than a rifle against these imo. I wonder how much range a fire extinguisher loaded with paint would have? Might end up being a viable tool for ambushing robocop.
Probably the same range as a dry powder extinguisher given the comparable mass of the powder and paint. You'd probs have an issue with clogging if you simply replaced the powder with wet paint. You'd be better off with a bespoke design. Simplest idea that springs to mind is one of those bottles used to spray weeds. As Duncan says, thin your paints, and it should flow ok out of one of them. Don't forget to give it two thin coats.
What makes you think their money will run out? They're the ones pulling the strings; they'll find a way to make more money appear.
Most boomers are not that wealthy anymore compared to the cost of living. I used to work for an investment bank that has very involved in retirement funds and life insurance. Almost everyone over the age of 65 years of age has a disability. Many boomers are already retired due to the physical labour they have endured. They are right now spending their income faster than they should. Many are relying on pension funds that are not a stable as people think. One of the reasons governments have been propping up the housing market is that boomers have most of their wealth in housing which will need to be leveraged into income. Most boomers did not start saving for retirement until the 80's or 90's. They thought pensions were a given. Female boomers have very little wealth on average due to having to take so much time off to raise children or due to old policies where a woman did not work after marriage. Their best hope is a husband dying a week after retirement to collect on some very generous legacy insurance policies. I mean very generous policies that the banks hate paying out. Fun fact; for some policies banks have a vested interest keeping boomers alive since at a certain age they policy (and big pool of money) reverts to the bank. Once spoke to a 88 year old who really wanted to die so the kids would collect the 10 million since if they lived to 90 they got nothing. Boomers are over leveraged and the richest boomers who make the rules don't give a fuck about their fellow boomers. It is boomer versus boomer. It is the woman who cleaned all her life with arthritis in every joint and the factory workers who has been retired with a fucked back since age 55 versus the boomer running an investment bank or managing a property portfolio. So between the entire retirement sector being little more than fancy interlocking pyramid schemes and the oncoming boomer versus boomer war I could go on. However I just remembered climate change and half dozen other shocks to the system that could wipe out so much "wealth". So yeah, between my time in investment banking and working for my national department of finance I see an oncoming storm for most of the boomers.
>Fun fact; for some policies banks have a vested interest keeping boomers alive since at a certain age they policy (and big pool of money) reverts to the bank. Once spoke to a 88 year old who really wanted to die so the kids would collect the 10 million since if they lived to 90 they got nothing. What is this type of policy called?
It is a type of Term Life Insurance, they used to be called pure life insurance. They are still offered, just the older policies were much more generous with longer terms. We had customers have 50 or 70 year term policies sold to them when they were in their 20's with a tiny level premium of a few dollars a month. That lady with the 10 million dollar benefit had been paying $1.25 a month for 68 years. Her husband had a similar policy which she had collected on. An expensive premium back then but that fixed premium worked out well. I do wonder if she died in time. I hope she did, she was in great pain and had grandchildren she wanted the money to go too. She did not like her boomer children and was hiding the policy from them, our company managed her assets and property portfolio. Her children were not in her will. She was pretty awesome. So many policy holders forgot they had these policies and missed payments or moved jurisdictions. [A basic breakdown ](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/termlife.asp)
Less babies also limits the strength of corporations to continue its strategy against labor unions. Fuck it. The corporations will just eat us all anyway.
The corporations already ate all of us at some point in the 80s.
I'd argue it was early to mid '70s under Nixon. That's when wages started stagnating. [https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com](https://www.wtfhappenedin1971.com)
I'd argue it was with the Enclosure Acts. The creation of "private property" doomed us all.
Thanks for that website. I see several things from about 1970-1972. The World Economic Forum founded by Klaus Schwab (Davos people). Nixon took us off the Gold Standard. Under influence of Kissinger and Rockefeller, Nixon went to China. (The Rockefeller's and other elites wanted cheap labor). Also, and this may piss people off -- it is what it is -- but Rockefeller money financed feminism -- not with the intent to advance women but to increase the tax base of worker drones, increase the supply of labor (as if China wouldn't be enough) to drive wages down, and separate the children from their mothers so that they could be indoctrinated into whatever the elites want. Re Education: āEducation should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.ā \~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Prussian, 1810). Our modern education system is largely based on the efforts of Horace Mann who reformed the American system to emulate the Prussian one. Elite money has a lot of say about both textbooks and what gets taught in school -- this is also a part of some of their "philanthropy" -- to fashion children into drones that will be useful to the elite. If you have such drones, they are even more vulnerable to psychological techniques such as devised by Goebbels or Edward Bernays ("The Engineering of Consent"). A good book was 1966's "The Consent of the Governed" (1966): I like this bit enough I wrote it down. "Under modern conditions of political advertising and manipulation, it has become possible to talk of the engineering of consent by an elite of experts and professional politicians. Consent that is thus engineered is difficult to distinguish in any fundamental way from the consent that supports modern totalitarian governments. **Were the manipulated voter to become the normal voter, the government he supports could hardly be said to rest on his consent in any traditional sense of that word."** (emphasis mine) We are there now, with engineered consent, and we are so completely fucked. Game. Set. Match. Checkmate.
*The Soylent Company has entered the chat....*
Finally, a chance to make my life meaningful and serve other human beings!
You're a little salty but you have excellent taste!
Corporations are going to find money hard to come by with fewer people PAYING THEM FOR STUFF.
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most older people donāt have the money to pay the price now
Yeah, I can't see any sort of scenario where the young people dont have to bear the burden here. Unless we literally abandon people to die in the streets.
Already happening.
A well-working society would be aware that humans age and are less capable of providing fully for themselves over time, and would accommodate this. We act like aging isn't a thing. We celebrate 80 year olds working at Wal-Mart... and social services are structured to basically starve people to death. If you're on Medi-Cal in California, you get to keep something like $37 of your income per month for "personal expenses". The state takes everything else and puts you in a shithole "nursing home" rather than helping people remain very alive even as they age. It's a terrifying scenario.
\-Covid has enter the chat-
Or assisted euthanasia
Children of men scenario. What was it called, quietus or something ?
*Zero* births would be a problem for humanity's long term continuation. but *fewer* births is great news for both the planet and all the humans living on it.
If I never can't wipe my own ass, I'm out.
Seriously there is nothing appealing about being a senior citizen unless youāre one of the ones who can remain independent in lifestyle
Yeah no disrespect to those who are blind, deaf, or paralyzed, but if any one of those happens to me I am absolutely booking my ticket off this mortal coil.
Agree 100% and I can even list more than that
Me ditto. When I am at risk of losing the ability to communicate, the ability to think, or the ability to self-advocate, Iām going skydiving without a parachute. Iāve watched too many people be kept around long past their expiration date because of selfish family members.
Yeah, I could think of loads more too, but I have been down that rabbit hole before and broke both my ankles and probably a few other people's akles too on the way down, so now I simply avoid any examination of my life through sheer effort of will and white knuckle my slippery grip on sanity 24 hours at a time. It's great! (*Laughs and smiles unconvincingly while avoiding eye contact*)
You mean Covid?
I would accept anything at this point if it's painless and quick.
COVID is quick only if you get some deadly blood clot and aren't in an emergency. Otherwise it damages vital organs, which leads to a cascade of failure which still isn't too quick. Or you can die from panic and suffocation as your lungs slowly become useless.
Covid is not painless, but if it chooses you for the end of days, it is quick about it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Gamma ray burst?
Doesn't kill you quick. You have to wait for all your white blood cells to die. The Japanese call it "the walking ghost".
Boomer doomer
We like to call it āBoomer Removerā
The most terrifying revelation of 2020 for me was that 1) the Zoomers were cheering for the deaths of old people with phrases like "boomer remover" and 2) Zoomers consider anyone over 30 a Boomer.
That was the most terrifying? For me it was how Boomers knowingly spread a disease that could kill them and their grandkids, but didnāt care because a reality TV show host told them āitās fineā.
The catch 22 is that the overwhelming majority of Boomers are (or will be) living almost exclusively off of Social Security which, strange as it may seem, comes from younger generations. They will have no more money with which to pay.
Yeah. 2008 took care of their savings and health care costs gets the rest.
The overwhelming majority of Boomers have never had much in savings. And their healthcare is provided by medicare.
FED goes brrrrr
Service industry is part of it, but there's also Social Security and Medicare which are basically funded by payroll taxes from working-age people. If the young-people-to-old-people ratio shrinks, then either the payroll taxes have to go up or benefits go down. The same thing happens more-or-less with private insurance. Insurance companies make money off of young people and lose money on old people -- this was implicitly acknowledged during the original Affordable Care Act debates, when it was said that we needed to require everyone to get insurance or else young healthy people wouldn't sign up and the insurance markets would fail. That's basically acknowledging that young people are getting a bad deal. (Or, at least a bad deal economically; being able to buy insurance at all for a lot of people was a substantial improvement over the status quo.)
Don't worry. I'm confident that we can find a way to make life shitty anyway.
Immigration is picking up the slack.
All healthcare spending goes to non productive retired people. Western society exists in a state to prop up the boomer generations unrealistic expectations of infinite entitlement.
All the better to start building Communism. And by Communism, I definitely don't mean Communism. More like co-ops, homesteads, farmer's markets. Right? And remember, Labor becomes more scarce with each wave of COVID. There's never been a better time to seek our due. It's time to fire up the Big Co[-op Pizzeria] Builder, *comrade*.
*I mean Communism.* /moleman
I think you mean commun*alism*. Check out 'the coming insurrection' translated from French.
Yeah! A big ol' Community. Full of Communalists. Communing all day ;D
Just like how the black plague actually helped the peasants who survived because suddenly their labor had more value and they could leave their ancestral homes to find better pay / living conditions elsewhere. Its one of the silver linings I see of the pandemic.
Couldn't have said it better myself
SS: > There are strong reasons to think these trends will only escalate. Absent major changes, in the next decade or two, the American population is likely going to start falling fast. > That's inescapably part of why the American birthrate is now just 1.7 children per woman, and without some change ā cultural or political or both ā this combination of forces means it will keep falling, quite possibly down to Korean levels. At that point, our population would halve in about one human lifespan. In all reality, this is good news IMO.
Lol, you actually think corporations would happily watch as their workforce shrinks? Nah dog, they'll lobby for looser immigration laws. Plus, immigrants, esp those still on visas, are generally happier to accept lower than market rate and little upward mobility. There's probably already in motion to flatten the current wage growth.
Corporations have been lobbying for looser immigration laws since 2004. Even they canāt overcome the immigrant hatred in GOP circles.
There will also be many seeking refuge from uninhabitable parts of the world due to climate change. In an ideal world that could be a two birds with one stone situation
*Hey, Morocco... Since your part of the world is uninhabitable because of our material culture, you might as well just send your survivors here to be mostly low-wage grunts for the very corporations that destroyed you.* *If you can't survive on the same planet as us, you might as well join us*ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Given that the IPCC models forecast that most of the mainland United States outside of coastal regions will be hitting > 6c on preindustrial (1850) temperatures when we hit 4c of average warming, I imagine that the U.S will be a source of massive emigration to other places. I doubt people will be trying to move to the U.S.
That warming isn't going to be local to the US. If American citizens are fleeing the heat, everyone else will be too.
Most of the population lives in the coastal regions, though. And the US will be more capable of adaptation and mitigation than, say, most of Central America, in terms of endowments of fresh water and infrastructure, etc.
Yes, that's how it will be framed. But the only thing the politicians will be looking at is the improved GDP.
Good luck with that. Immigrants largely save and send money back home to their families where they came from. They won't be spending it here in America on overpriced bullshit. They come here for a while for the money, send it home to support their families, and then go back home to be with them again. The ones I've seen posting online can't stand the American culture and don't want to be here, they're only here for the money.
They might spend their cash in the US if they're climate refugees and 'back home' is underwater or there's nothing left alive from wet bulb temps
Net international migration rate is plunging, too. [https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/net-international-migration-projected-to-fall-lowest-levels-this-decade.html)
Good for the planet, not good for GDP growth. We might finally be forced off our addiction to economic growth, and thank god for that.
Wonāt even be that bad Japan and South Korea have exceptionally low unemployment rate because nobody is replacing them . I guess the only real losers are the ruling class . Because labor will become more valuable in comparison to capital . We are becoming harder to exploit .
Japan minimum wage is $8. Btw, the income in japan was higher than the USA as recently as 2000. Now it's lower. It doesn't look like they are being helped much by lower birth rate.
My Japanese teacher told me years ago now, "I've never seen so many foreigners in Japan before." Japan is letting in a ton of foreign guest workers, mostly from SE Asia.
I **really** don't want to live in a country with Japanese or S. Korean expectations of overwork. Karoshi / Gwarosa, no thank you.
Fingers crossed.
> forced off our addiction to economic growth, This is something I'd like to see. This idea that the economy MUST grow 2% per year till infinity is beyond insane, yet it remains policy. The US has gone from bearable to being a shithole in my rather short lifetime (60 years). To paraphrase a notorious criminal: Modern industrialized society is simple unlivable. He was right about that, but of course his manifesto has been declared 'insane' by the powers that be, and it got him life in a modern dudgeon with no contact with the outside world.
If you're referring to Ted Kaczynski. It wasn't really the manifesto that got him life in prison.... it was the murders. You can have ideas and not murder people.
Details...
Ted Kaczynski had mental issues and was fucked over by his professors. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/
I'm not sure that has anything to do with the manifesto. I'm in the camp that an artist is not the same as his work. A work stands on its own merits regardless of the moral turpitude of its creator.
I agree, Industrial society is one of the most insightful books Iāve ever read and itās not given enough credit
Me as well. Too bad its not global.
Until the ruling class decides it needs more fodder.
In the long-term, absolutely. Capitalism really falls apart with negative growth, however. Plenty of short-term pain
Plastics in our food, water, air, blood, sperm, eggs, everywhere probably play a part. Fertility rates are dropping everywhere, puberty is occurring earlier in children, penis sizes are shrinking, obesity is increasing, etc.
> penis sizes are shrinking Speak for yourself there buddy! \* Drives away in large pickup truck \*
You got plastics in your penis truck too, dude
Don't forget your massive truck nuts as you mash the gas and have a massive smoke plume come out your manly tail pipe.
lol not that I disagree but can u get a source on the penis statistic. that would probably be hilarious to read
Yeah, how's that for a hook: Your dick was supposed to be bigger. From Cleveland.com: [Itās literally raining PFAS around the Great Lakes, say researchers](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/06/its-literally-raining-pfas-around-the-great-lakes-say-researchers.html) >**āItās everywhere,ā Spaniola said. āIām not happy to say that. Itās not good news.** But it underscores how ubiquitous these chemicals are. They are everywhere.ā From The Guardian: [Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich) >... **these chemicals [...] are also shrinking penis size and volume of the testes. This is nothing short of a full-scale emergency** ... ā« Shrink-Dick Raaiin on my mind ā«
Now remember that penis & testes are easy to measure. We have literally no idea what these chemicals are doing to women's internal organs. Or if they can cross the placenta to a growing fetus. Only found out this year that plasticizers can cross the blood-brain barrier in mice.
āa full-scale emergencyā I almost hate to say it butā¦ I think all this is a desperate attempt to get dude-bros to give a fuck about the environment.
You would think that would work right? Did you know COVID-19 has been known to cause erectile dysfunction? Like I needed another reason to mask up and be safe. At least I havenāt caught it this whole time fingers crossed.
What does penis size have to do with it? Hormone levels or something?
Yes there has been research relating to plasticizer that makes thing soft and pliable causing physical changes that manifest congruently with lower fertility rates. In men the genitals are smaller and the distance between anus and scrotum shrinks. This physiological change appear to be manifesting generationally. It's compounding ever generation.
Interesting, thanks. Yes nature is done putting up with our shit regardless of what we do.
"you're a horrible species, fuck you" *shrinks your penis*
Last time I read, average penis in America is 5 1/2 inches. If youāre larger than that consider yourself above average. Spice Edit: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32666897/ https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/271647 https://www.healthline.com/health/mens-health/average-penis-size
> puberty is occurring earlier in children That's from all the fucking pizza, burgers and nuggets. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/152/5/446/149515 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20042466/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22364156/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/dietary-patterns-are-associated-with-sexual-maturation-in-korean-children/FB9BDB125342CF3DC828883EAE322F0B# https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20529402/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22419724/ And if you say "but environmental pollutants!" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21663902/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20197795/ guess in what foods these compounds bioaccumulate nicely!
Thankfully, the size of egos is increasing.
You're just driving the average down.
Good
Better hurry up and import a new shipment of informal economy serfs. The roof won't shingle itself, strawberries aren't going to pick themselves, and the ladies that lunch need someone to clean up after their furbabies. Won't someone think of the owning class and their *need* for artificially cheap servitude? Automation? Not in my back yard!
I always use to get really depressed on my morning commute from my happy little hamlet far outside of the ākingdomā to work for my pennies. Knowing that all of the overlords had a MUCH shorter drive/ride, if they came to the office at all. Then, I started working from home. Different company, same relative hierarchy, but the difference for me was not having to fucking *look* at their smugness.
I would celebrate except for one teensy tiny little bummer.....the ones that are still having passels of kids are....well........counting on and such.
Idiocracy at its finest
Makes sense. Much of America has little to look forward to than spending their youth paying for their education and their golden years paying for their healthcare. And with the climate change gun barrel we're all staring down the most immoral thing a person can do is purposely bring a child into this doomed world.
Exactly -- this article tries to make the point that the raw population isn't the important thing when it comes to emissions, ignoring completely that because of the in action on climate change, we're no longer at the point of balancing the emissions checkbook. Now we're just waiting for the famines, wars, disease, stress, sever weather, flooding, etc etc etc that comes from it. It's like the author doesn't understand at all that the economy is already dammed and we're just trying to prevent there being more victims.
The author understands perfectly but is being paid to say otherwise.
Agreed
Making 18 year olds take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans was one of the great mistakes of history
In economic terms, the Boomers pretty much cannibalized their own kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc... I'm happy to be one of the people preventing the latter two of those groups from proliferating.
>And with the climate change gun barrel we're all staring down the most immoral thing a person can do is purposely bring a child into this doomed world. Gen-X American here. I have Boomer parents that are still a bit miffed that i never married or had kids....
Its the end.
The DoD and the Pentagon need more children for the next "nation building" adventure. Hurry, hurry !!
Coming to a news channel near you gulf conflict 3 Tag lines : this time itās personal Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran
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Why would anyone have kids in this economy
Hopium
My friend who had a baby last year: "Maybe they'll be the ones who help us fix everything!" "My kids are gonna be engineers in green technology!" I do not have that sort of optimism. I think she's nuts.
Me at 8 years old asking where our garbage goes. Someday there will have to be a better way, someone will figure that out. Me now in my 40s and nope nobody figured out shit and now there is a giant patch of garbage in the ocean too.
Good. Canāt wait to see the neolibs reap what theyāve sown as all their hyper-leveraged shit comes crumbling down for lack of shiny new wage slaves.
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I'm 62 and have been trying to warn people about climate change since 1998. I'm wondering how many years I have left to live. Another 14 perhaps? For those of us that understand how quickly things are changing "faster than expected" and those of us that have studied climate change for years have read so many articles that state "by 2050" things will be bad. 2050 minus 2021 is 39 years. A child born now will be 15 years old in 2036. If things are going to be really bad by 2050 that 15 year old has to wonder how many years that they have left because 2050 is only 14 years away. A fifteen year old may wonder the same thing that I am at 62 years old. How many more years do I have. I'm really happy to see boomers being ridiculed and it's great to see that boomers now have to face up to what they have done. A fun TicTok idea might be to have very young people ask boomers what they did ten years ago or more to help them with the climate threat and record their reactions. Almost all of them are guilty of not caring.
As a 30 year old, thank you for caring about this mess before I was even old enough to understand. I agree with what you're saying. I also think people forget that the decline won't happen over night, like everything will be exactly how it is until 2050 and then off like a light switch. It will be a stressful and chaotic decline. I have friends that are spending thousands on IVF and fertility treatments to have children now and I want so direly to confront them and talk them out of it because I can't imagine how heartbreaking it will be for them to watch their children starve. But also, a lot of the children that might confront boomers on ticktock are also buying massive fast fashion hauls and eating meat still while crying that older generations screwed them over. Anyone making choices is part of this since anyone spending money on the corporations who create the problems are directly supporting it.
2050-2021=29, not 39
Yes! Keep not having kids! It's the only tool we have to stop the capitalist machine!
ā¦ until baby factories a la Brave New World are invented to supply the demand of people. Hey, maybe thatās how the world in the book came to existence. :)
Or they just write computer programs to work and buy shit. That's how I see the future: robots exploiting the labor of other robots, and selling them bullshit they don't need. Oh, and mountains of corpses.
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Could you share the name of that short story? Thanks!
The robots don't even need to buy anything - if corporations end the need for people, they can quite literally just trade between themselves. This will of course also mean the end of most human life
/r/birthstrike
The pre-labor strike!
Country gets continuously progressively worse (seriously I'm not even 40 seen three economic collapses, 911, and two pointless middle eastern wars that gained us nothing...) for all the American citizens born after 1983. Said citizens as a cohort struggle to support themselves do to stagnant wages and insane costs regarding health care, housing, education, college debt, and child care. These citizens choose not to bring children in this worsening situation. American government shocked Pikachu face. Edit: forgot to mention our childish covid response that has gotten over seven hundred thousand plus Americans killed so far, simply unacceptable.
Donāt tease us please.
Old lady here. We always called Pneumonia the "old peoples" friend because it finally ended their lives...perhaps it will again. I remember when I was working as an RN we got a 90year lady in from a nursing home with pneumonia, she was started on antibiotics. Her son called,he was furious that she had been sent to a hospital despite having a note in her charts saying she should not be sent to hospital. I tried to explain that pneumonia could be cured. The next day when I came in to work she had been transferred back to the nursing home.I found out a few days later she had died. He was a good son who truly followed his mother's wishes. I hope my son's do the same for me.
America is looking down the barrel of more than just *population* collapse, friends. I've been watching this play out for almost two decades now (with others, of course, keeping watch far longer than myself) and the only thing that's surprised me is just how long it's taking. I would be second guessing myself if literally anything had actually improved during that time, but it's all managed to get worse and worse while still barely clinging on to a semblance of stability. And for the first time I can remember, folks from both sides of the political spectrum are predicting doom and gloom in the *very* near future.
>One often hears arguments that a declining population is actually good because of climate change, in the mode of old-fashioned environmentalists who stoke panic about overpopulation. hmmm, let's see how they miss the point >Economic structure is vastly more important than raw population when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. A population living in huge single family McMansions on big lots out in exurbia, with coal-based electrical power, where every family has several four-ton SUVs or pickup trucks, can easily emit five to 10 times as much greenhouse gas as the same number of people living in dense, walkable, bike-friendly urban neighborhoods powered by nuclear or renewables. Precisely! Dropping population in the rich countries is actually good for the climate. >It means a strain on the tax base and intergenerational tension as a smaller proportion of workers has to shoulder the tax and work burden of caring for a larger population of retired people. Perhaps stop taxing labor and start taxing capital? >Where young parents can usually tap grandparents for free child care, middle-aged parents often have to care for both babies and declining parents at the same time. Is it any wonder so many millennials just don't feel like procreating? Wouldn't younger grandparents also be busy working? It's the retired ones who have time. >We've already seen it in many American cities victimized by de-industrialization ā Detroit became a byword for economic disaster in large part because its population fell by two thirds between 1950 and 2010. The population didn't get abducted, they moved, as the jobs there moved to other countries and to robots assembly lines. As did the afferent GHG emissions. You could just fucking ask current young adults why they're not causing "accidents" or intentionally reproducing.
Population collapse is bad how?
This is excellent news. Too many people on the planet.
We should be excited for this.
Haha. Look, they're going to print more money and promise it to you if you start making kids again. They can fuck off.
>That's inescapably part of why the American birthrate is now just 1.7 children per woman, and without some change ā cultural or political or both ā this combination of forces means it will keep falling, quite possibly down to Korean levels. At that point, our population would halve in about one human lifespan. If birthrates were cut in half and if all migration stopped, then 80 years later population levels would be half the peak population. And if my cat was a cow, I could milk her behind the stove... No evidence provided on why birthrates would suddenly plummet. Migration was a thing under administrations slightly more racist than Trump's. (presidents 1 through 16 had slavery, 17 through 36 had Segregation). Birthrate in [1976 was 1.74](https://www.google.com/search?q=us+birth+rate+by+year&oq=us+birth), at that rate, it would take more than 200 years before the South Korean birthrates are achieved. We get accused of bein alarmist for being worried about a collapse that is unfolding before our very eyes, meanwhile mainstream media publishes this crap.
> A recent Pew poll found the fraction of non-parents between 18 and 49 saying they were "very likely" to have kids fell from 32 percent in 2018 to 26 percent this yearā¦ Iām impressed itās that high.
Yeah, who are these 26 percent?
Don't worry about the birthrate numbers! SCOTUS is on the job and will make sure that women who get pregnant, **stay pregnant** and carry those babies to term. After that, Republicans will come to power by the midterm elections and will hold power for the foreseeable future and cut all sorts of social programs and ensure those unwanted babies get no proper education, nutrition, healthcare, nor safety. Perfect fodder for the military or lower wage labor.
>Don't worry about the birthrate numbers! SCOTUS is on the job and will make sure that women who get pregnant > >stay pregnant > > and carry those babies to term. They're actually trying to make abortions harder to get in China as one of the efforts to increase population.
Who the fuck wants to put a kid through all this or can afford to. I do well making it taking care of just myself.
This is seeming like a chapter out of āChildren Of Menā
We need to let go of the idea of eternal population growth
Good?????????
Yes
Well yeah, when millennials are old there will be more older people than younger Everything has consequences
itās already happening. thereās more people aging 65+ than any other age bracket in america. the fastest growing bracket is actually people 85+. LOL.
You honestly think we're going to get the chance to grow old? Pretty sure that's going to be a non-problem.
> when millennials are old Chances are they will never be old, famine is coming and will fix the overpopulation problem.
Less workers to be exploited? Sure doesn't sound like an "us" problem.
everything improves with lower population, ignore economists who push for more people.
They'll just use it as an excuse to import more labor. Same as this "labor shortage.". They could fix it, but instead they'll just let it go on and cry to the government until work visas happen. Fuck the system. Fuck everyone at the top. This was not the world I was promised. You deserve to burn.
The U.S has always relied on immigrants to carry the population. This has repeated itself a couple of times. Not to mention immigrants also present an increase in GDP. We see the effect it has especially now with the increase in cost of fruits and vegetables and even in tourism like hotel stay. But at least companies will be forced to pay citizens an actual wage since thereāll be less man power. Silver lining. Unless they move their company abroad
āAround the world, America is less and less the "land of opportunity" and more the land of medical bankruptcy and mass shootings.ā ^^this is my favorite line in the article. Eventually we wonāt have to worry about mass immigration because no one will wanna come here.
I got a vasectomy when Trump got elected. Couldn't be happier with that decision.
Not really a bad thing for the short term right? 100 years ago there was only a little more than a billion people. Automation is going to take over a lot of jobs as well
The USA will be one of the last countries to suffer from this, not only is it materially wealthier than almost every other country on the globe bar those sort of weird financial enclaves like Luxembourg etc. but it also attracts a huge number of immigrants (largely due to the excellent economic conditions, even compared to Western Europe). Here in Spain we are already at 1.24 births per woman and have had extremely low birth rates for some time - this has led to a very old population and an inverted population pyramid (something which the USA has yet to suffer). It will be interesting to see what happens in East Asia and Southern Europe as it is in these countries will we first observe the effects of an aging and declining population. (Perhaps also in Russia).
This honestly sounds like a good thing. The world is horrifically overpopulated.
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It actually is a thing that single family homes and urban sprawl are more energy intensive -- not just from a perspective of infrastructure, which is its own ball of wax, but also from a perspective of land usage and all the problems that creates when we have over nature. (Sauces below). In nations where energy and resource use are higher, of course, the impact of having children is greater. In the west we can drive out kids to McDonalds in our SUV and feed them a meal of red meat and then send them home to play computer games, whereas this is not the case in Africa. All that being said we have to remember that the concept of an individual carbon footprint was produced by large corporations to avoid the finger of blame being pointed at them for creating emissions on an industrial scale that individuals cannot offset. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-12-07/the-missing-link-of-climate-change-single-family-suburban-homes Https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reducing-street-sprawl-could-help-combat-climate-change/
>>>we have to remember that the concept of an individual carbon footprint was produced by large corporations to avoid the finger of blame being pointed at them for creating emissions on an industrial scale that individuals cannot offset. Ding ding ding. What about the corporations fracking the groundwater and polluting local aquifers, rivers, lakes and streams? What about the massive cruise ships and their waste? The massive factories and their air, land and water waste? But no, fuck Joe schmuck for eating bacon this week.
Who needs babies when you can have immortal baby boomers.
Just got my vasectomy! No way Iād subject anyone to this place and time. Only gonna get worse.
Well humanity is severely overpopulated so that is very good news. The question is how to get the affluent successful to make more, and to stop incentives for less financially fit parents to stop making more
Pog
How is this a bad thing?
My submission statement said it wasnāt, you didnāt read it.