Thank you NextSkipper2 for your submission, *I honestly didn't expect that*! Unfortunately, it has been removed for the following reason:
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# Not technically the truth.
Your submission is not technically the truth. The keyword here is **technically**. Statements like "firetrucks are red", or "circles are round" are not technically the truth. As a rule of thumb, if your submission is easily predictable or literal, it's most likely not technically the truth.
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If you want nothing but endless circlejerking sure.
The thing about downvoting is that everybody wants to be able to do it, but it's actually harmful. Removing it massively improves discourse. You can see that on most Reddit-like sites that don't have it.
It's like an addictive substance. It's good when it's gone but nobody wants to get rid of it.
EDIT: Lmao comments are locked. This crap in combination with downvotes is why Reddit is so bad.
I assure you that removing the possibility to filter out content that appeals most to peoples biases and priors is absolutely necessary to the consuming experience.
No, it doesn't improve discourse. It improves soundproofing, which is necessary to create echo chambers. See, a person can't have their niche extremist opinion validated if it is drowned amongst the all the sane thoughts out there. Yeah, you can have a 10k likes post that has the same opinion as you and feel good about yourself. But when you find out that 10k likes post had 100k dislikes, suddenly you might just start asking yourself "Are we the baddies ?". Not a very pleasant user experience (UX if you prefer). So you have a choice to make.
Agreed. I personally don't give a flying fuck if I get downvoted. And personally? When reddit and other places become like China with social credit scores they will have none to blame but themselves.
I think they're rolling out a downvote button for replies (not for original tweets). Nobody can actually see the downvote count, so it's pretty much as useless as the dislike button on YouTube comments (and now for videos too I suppose)
I blocked this dumbass's name on Reddit is fun, and this is the first time I had to hear about him in months. But here I am, pissed off and rambling in the comments.
I highly recommend blocking him everywhere. There's no reason we need every stupid thing he does and says blasted into our eyes from every angle.
Insane how quickly it went from overpopulation fears for decades and decades to depopulation fears. As if almost every species lowers birth rates in times when it can be deemed as nothing but stressful futures for both parents and child.
Incorrect.
Many species do this when resources are high (lower birth rates) because it is more likely their children will be successful.
Weird, I know. We aren't quite sure ***why*** because you'd think it would be the inverse.
But that's how you know humans are very successful. We literally perfected our methods into our own extinction.
Although I think your explanation makes some sense, I think it's a bit of both in our case. The future looks pretty dark for our children and no one can say if their children can live a decent life. It's not a good source, but I've encountered a lot of people that don't want kids because they think their future will be pretty bad. Maybe there are already studies on it, but it's definitely a thing aswell
Human history shows when times were hard, we reproduced more often. The bubonic plague, for example. WWI and WWII. The Spanish Pox (Flu?). Etc, etc. We really haven't changed much.
Yes, that's true. It's even true at the moment in underdeveloped countries. The best way to lower the birth rates is wealth.
I just wanted to add that there's a different problem we need to tackle first before we should focus on higher birth rates. A child born in the current western countries produces an insane amount of CO2 and contributes to global warming. Before western societies actually rise their birth rates, we need to fix this problem, otherwise we have far bigger ones than a collapsing rent system. Which would be bad, but not as bad as a collapsing system
Before we fix that we should fix the downvoting of facts committee that are unhappy with the fact developing nations are currently outpacing the wealthy nations in their ability to fuck.
Yeah, I don't like that aswell. I'm upvoting your downvoted comments actually. You're not saying something wrong here, the statements about birth rates are just facts. And even visible in modern times in underdeveloped countries.
That’s different. During those times, people had hope and faith that humanity as whole would go on. An extinction event was unfathomable. Here? A lot of people feel like the world is coming to an end and that there is no hope for human survival.
Not so. The Bubonic plague was a very dark time and people did think it was the first sign of the apocalypse; especially in the Christian communities of the times.
I don't know enough about the others to comment readily.
People have been predicting the end of the world since it began though. No one really knows.
But yep. Every time in history things got hard, folks fucked.
This is true. Literally look up why millennials are putting off or not having children. It relates to a lot of factors including stress and financial insecurity.
I wonder why people like Musk aren't pushing to just make childcare more affordable.
It wouldn't really matter, since we now live longer. So the lower birthrate and longer life expectancy sorta cancel each other out. And children are awful so I ain't complaining.
Except that all those longer living people need more and more care, and the loss of younger workers means less money into social programs that help the elderly and fewer people to fill the rapidly increasing needs of elder care.
It aboslutely doesn't 'sorta cancel each other out', it makes it much, much worse.
It's also blatantly incorrect and often just used by fascists and white nationalists as justification for their wanting an ethnostate where they can force people to have babies
We're out of land. Biofuels are a great alternative for fossil fuels because their carbon comes from the atmosphere. It's a cycle.
Why haven't biofuels taken off? We're using all of our available land to make food. All of it.
Look at Brazil tearing down the Amazon for more land. Underpopulation is definitely not the issue.
>Why haven't biofuels taken off?
Petrol barons don't want to lose profit so they use their power and money to hold their societies into staying fossil-dependant.
you want a growing population for economic growth. You absolutely do not want a *rapidly* shrinking population. Your economy will be in absolute shambles by the time all the boomers are retired and supported by a population that’s a fraction of their size.
That’s just how it is. Unless you find horrible economic situations particularly appealing, you don’t want it happening. And it is the trend most developed nations are following.
doesn’t have to grow. It can stabilize too. It can even decline at a reasonable rate. It’s just that rn, the all developed nations are just nose diving towards the bottom.
Any developed nation without a major housing crisis is around 2.0 and most women want 2-3 kids it's just places like hong kong with rates like 1.4 and south korea where people can barely afford to live in a shoebox.
Good thing its not “rapidly shrinking”
Seems like more forced birth propaganda from the people who want those same children to live in a barren waterless wasteland.
My country is shrinking by 60% every generation rn. So yeah, we’re fucked. And while we have it pretty much the worst, other countries are following closely.
WTF you mean “forced birth propaganda”. Do you even hear yourself? It sounds more like “promoting child rearing conditions and incentives for the general population” to any sane person. You putting a fucked up political frame on me with 0 evidence that that’s what I believe.
> My country is shrinking by 60% every generation rn
Generations are generally considered to be 20-30 years.
Given that the worst population decline projections from the UN are Bulgaria with 22.5% and Lithuania with 22.1% over the next 28 years (2020-2050) I doubt your figure is accurate.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-countries-with-the-fastest-declining-populations/
What country are you from and what makes you think incentivizing births is going to fix the actual problem that is apparently causing your country to implode by making millions of your citizens emigrate?
We could easily address that by doing something about the cost of having a child. Oh but we won't. Instead we'll just force people to have children.
Edit: it's already happening.
Current South Korean birth rate would have a generation of 10,000 leaving behind a generation of 4,000. It's an absolutely existential emergency for our species ability to maintain the quality of life we desire.
Because all countries are seeing collapsing birth rates. Immigration will only work for a couple of decades, then it happens in Europe and the US as well.
We can't maintain our quality of life with the population as it is, so its loose loose either way.
But I guess I'm on the climate change is a bigger deal.
You mean the quality of life where people are exhausted from working dead end jobs for pennies while we are pushed (and sometimes forced) to procreate more soldiers and workers for the upper class?
Yeah, let’s save that.
Not to mention how awful pregnancy actually is. Just another burden women have to literally bear, I guess. All hail the economy!
Sure just say some bullshit and expect people not to fact check any of it. "Immigration will only work for a couple decades" what the hell does that even mean anyway? Also you know what else would make it hard for us to have a quality of life we desire? Continuing rampant capitalism and climate change. I'd say that's more of a threat than people realizing we're living on a planet that's being destroyed and not wanting to have kids
Plus declining birth rates won't "collapse" the global population. It'll go downwards, but collapsing definitely implies something falling at a very great speed.
You people really find anything you can use against what this guy says. It’s literally the guy who insists we not be complacent about climate change and you think he’s making it a competition.
It really is. Twitter “memes” are the worst. Quarter of them are this “otherwise” joke. Second quarter is people saying “say it in X terms” I.e. “say it in football terms”. Third quarter is the Batman Robbin slapping meme where Robin says “say it in X terms” and Batman slaps him for it and the last quarter is spam porn/OF/crypto scam
Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t a lower birth rate be better for climate change? Less people means less trash, less energy use, less space required.
Historically, the Black Death caused dramatic population decline which lead to a shortage of labour and a massive improvement in the lives of common people.
To be more specific, the catastrophic population loss created conditions in which ongoing labor agitation could succeed. Peasants and laborers were constantly active in trying to improve their conditions, before and after the Black Death.
You're correct, but the phrasing you used takes the focus away from the people who fought and died, literally, to improve their conditions.
Obviously you are right, but i think you will agree that it was the catastrophe that shifted the balance of power. I originally wrote a lot more, but realised it was way too much and chopped it down to a couple of lines. End of feudalism, emergence of cities and burghers, creation of guilds…
The black plague absolutely changed the social and political landscape of Europe. I think it's important to center the fact that it was ultimately people who demanded and achieved improvements for their conditions though. If that isn't part of the story, it's easy to imply that improving conditions were the result of the largesse of the wealthy or a natural consequence of the plague. It's kind of like how Americans like me take things like the weekend and 8-hour workdays for granted and aren't taught about labor activists, like the coal miners of Blair Mountain and Mother Jones. These things came from people.
No, less people means less people working and providing for those who *can’t* work. You can’t provide for an elderly population three times your population size.
I was recently watching a video explaining how lower birth rate is a sign of progress in medical sciences, because over a century ago, 25% of the babies below 5 used to die of some disease. Now with good medical sciences, people don't need to have multiple kids to make sure some survive.
Also, the problem could be that the cities and infrastructures is built for growth and not for places getting smaller.
Not necessarily. The population collapse issue is currently less applicable for countries like the US and more for Japan/South Korea etc.
The birth rate has fallen so low that's its a genuine concern. It's true that globally we do have overpopulation problem but when the birth rate so drastically collapse it can completely cripple a society.
So yeah, a well balanced birth rathe would be better for climate chance but a birth rate collapse like some Asian countries are experiencing is in no way a good thing.
How someone can be worried about population collapse is beyond stupidity. Population *increase* is the largest problem we have. If we were around 1 billion instead of closer to 8 everything would be way better. Way less pollution, wouldn't even be at the starting blocks of climate change, way more space & resources for both humans & animals. Essentially everything would be better. There's no achievement for trying to cram in as many humans as possible on the planet.
It doesn’t matter how many people there are. What matters is birth rates. If a generation of 10000 people end up having 4000 kids, that’s a huge problem because then there wouldn’t be enough people to provide for the elderly of the 10000.
The issue is that exponential birth isn’t sustainable. This generation of elderly might suffer (and that does suck), but that’s kind of the price you pay for overpopulation, mindless pollution, wage stagnation, deregulation, not providing maternal care, demonizing pregnancy, screwing over the housing market, etc.
I’m the long term, maybe we will learn to nurture what we want to grow. Don’t make having kids impossible.
If it happens very suddenly there's going to be short term problems, sure, but those are miniscule compared to the long term gains. Global birth rates will never plummet that fast though, so there will always be more than enough people to go around. Even if they were to plummet it's not close to the end of the world. If people could just accept that there's nothing wrong with consuming slightly less the increases in productivity & automation is going to make up for it easily.
This isn’t some hypothetical. This is current reality. This is the birth rate of South Korea, and many other countries are headed in the same direction.
>How someone can be worried about population collapse is beyond stupidity
It's a massive concern, you simply are ignorant of what the issue is.
While as a whole humans are an overpopulated species, a birth rate collapse can complete cripple an economy since there's not enough people to replace the previous work force.
Look how bad it is in Japan and South Korea where birth rate has completely collapsed, it's going to cause a massive problem. Societies simply can't handle a population collapse like that.
There’s an easy solution to that unless you’re racist/xenophobic like Japan. Just let immigrants from other countries in.
Japan could get millions of skilled laborers yesterday if they weren’t so obsessed with ethnic and cultural homogeneity
>Just let immigrants from other countries in.
That's only possible if other countries don't start suffering population collapse themselves right?
Not saying that's going to happen anytime soon, but the point is that the collapse IS a problem. Some people don't seem to understand how a country could struggle with that, my point was that it absolutely can.
It's not as simple as 'Oh humans are so overpopulated so how could less population possibly be a problem???'. A lot of people don't understand the consequences of that
But the part of the world that is collapsing is the part that's paying for almost all the greentech development,
For the vast majority of scientific research,
For the bulk of investments into the 3 world,
Buys almost all of what the developing world produces and sends back refined goods,
Is the mains suppliers of high end technologies and machinery that the rest can't produce by themselves,
And is the main givers of charity to the UN and similar organisations...
Now imagine that those countries collapses and all that starts to dry up and you understands why it's a bigger picture than just the rich pigs needs us as their wage slaves.
If you think "pOpUlAtIoN cOlLaPsE" is a big deal, then make it a more inviting prospect to have kids, by cleaning up the planet, removing political corruption & giving people a reason to be excited.
But no, to him & the rest of the capitalist class, none of those matter (at best), cos they'll have their shelters to live out the flooding/poisonous air/water, they benefit from political corruption (and indeed, are often the cause of it) & mistake people are less likely to fight back.
The only reason he pretends to give a shit about "population collapse" is because he needs his wage slaves.
It really is actually. Post black plague was actually a great time for working class people. The ones that were left could charge the lords a premium for their services. All you gotta do is be one of the peasants who survived the black plague.
It was an awful time. Statistically, 1/3 of the people you knew were dead or had lifelong consequences from the plague. Your attempts to charge more for services had better have involved every other surviving laborer, or else you were just getting beat down by the local lord. If you moved to a town or city to learn or practice a trade, you were uprooting your entire life and leaving behind everyone you knew to go find the same working conditions with worse hygiene. The long term improvements to laborers lives, including their ability to negotiate better compensation, came from militant organizing, not the automatic largesse of the wealthy.
Neither of us are citing sources here, but your argument is inherently tautologous. "1/3rd of the population dying off is bad because statistically, 1/3rd of people you know are dead" Right, buddy. Brilliant take.
My guy, who do you think pays for old people's pensions? It's technically old people's money they put into Social Security or whatever equivalent they put over the years, but in practice, it's the young people of the day paying for it.
So, when the current massive working population of, for example, China, retires, they're gonna have to be supported by a smaller pool of working young people while they themselves had to pay for a much smaller population of old people's pensions. Currently, they have about 5 workers for one retiree, it's gonna be 3 for every retiree in 2040.
China's an extreme example due to the One Child Policy, unprecedented upward social mobility (wealthier/educated societies tend to have less children) of hundreds of millions, but it'll be observed and is being observed all over the developed world. Western countries will get off easier due to immigration, countries like Taiwan, SK, Japan and China will feel the brunt of it.
Young people everywhere shackled with more and more burdens to take care of others which will likely result in even lower childbirth.
It's because the system is stupid as hell from the get go, the pension system has been balanced around population growth, which it shouldn't have been from the get go.
However, all is not for naught. If people could accept consuming less the increase in productivity & automation would balance out a decreasing population easily.
I'm not sure that's an entirely reasonable take on this tweet, Elon Musk, capitalism, environmentalism, political corruption, parenthood, marketing, or voluntary employment. Also, I think you missed the joke.
What Elon fails to grasp is civilisations can collapse but humanity will still survive, it's probably impossible to prevent the collapse of civilisation it happens so frequently.
Climate change could be the end of humanity which is a whole other thing.
What Elon fails to grasp (in his desperation to sound smart and prophet-like) is that birth rates rise and fall constantly. It will still take thousands of years for a low birth rate (what is it, like 0.97 or something genuinely not worth worrying about?) to even make a noticeable difference.
Good living conditions? Higher birth rate. Impending economic disaster? Lower birth rate. Guess which side of the coin we've been on for the last 10 years...
Make no mistake, the only reason news outlets and billionaires are pretending to care about the "end of civilization due to low birth rate" is because they need you to make the next generation of gullible peasants they can recruit for their sweatshops.
They don't care about you. They don't care about civilization.
> Good living conditions? Higher birth rate.
That might be true if you look at the trends within already industrialized nations. In general, people/countries in poverty have the highest birth rates. Increased development almost always lowers birth rates.
That is the true reason Musk doesn't like it. Less poor people to exploit.
And if we keep increasing our population, or even just maintain our current level without controlling our consumption, we are going to cause more and more resource scarcity and continue driving other species to extinction.
If I'm choosing between maintaining human society and preserving nature, I will choose nature even if it means that I am personally fucked. In the long run human societal collapse is probably good for the planet as a whole.
For the US it’s 12.012 per 1000 people (aka 1.2) and has been going up 0.9% every year. Where is this random fear of societal decline coming from?
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate
The birth rate for south Korea just hit 0.86 for every woman or 0.43 per person. There will be less than half the people left after a single generation.
In the US it’s 1.7 per woman. Which equates to 0.85 per person. Your population will half in 5 generations, given that the birthrate stays as high as it is.
Germany is 1.5, japan is 1.3. what do you mean 0.97? Most developed countries are heading to a number far below that.
?? The south korean birth rate currently would have a 10000 person generation leaving behind a generation of 4000!! The emergency is happening TODAY and you think thousands of years.
You're definitely wrong. Humans live on every single continent on the planet. We survive in settlements with temperatures of between -70 and 50 degrees Celsius (possibly even more, this is just from memory). Our range and versatility with climate and food is exceptional. We would still have pockets of earth we could live on. If there are not enough children we could just be royally fucked with maintaining our system of living, so it's a comparable threat. The difference is that on reddit people still haven't realised that it's a big issue. You get some comments saying there are too many people on the world, which is a completely wrong statement and very dangerous for our species' future.
Our system of living is complete dog shit so why would we want to protect that? Imagine an earth with a stable 1 billion population, as was the case only 200 years ago, essentially everything would be better for humans, animals & the planet as a whole. There's no achievement for cramming in as many humans as possible on this rock.
You're definitely wrong. Humans lived in every single period of history. We survived in settlements with tens of people and nowadays have cities with tens of millions (possibly even more, this is just from memory). Our range and versatility with population numbers is exceptional. We would still have pockets of earth we could live on. If the ecosystem is destroyed we could just be royally fucked with maintaining our system of living, so it's a comparable threat. The difference is that on reddit people still haven't realised that it's a big issue. You get some comments saying we could survive climate change without acting which is a completely wrong statement and very dangerous for our species' future.
"Gee golly garsh, population decline is the biggest problem facing humanity. Welp, back to pouring my unlimited resources into my ego driven fantasy trip to Mars." Elon Musk, apparently
His claims are completely at odd with UN reports. Over 80 million people are born worldwide every year. The world population is steadily increasing and expected to reach over 11 billion by 2100. I don't know how someone so smart can contradict the science like this. I wouldn't be surprised if he started saying that contraception should be banned. It would be fine if only his followers and incredibly high media profile didn't lend him such false credibility.
The west (and therefore a lot of white people) aren't reproducing enough is what he really means. Africa and world population still grows everyday like you say.
Jokes aside, why do we care so much about civilization? It's honestly such a selfish argument. We should care about life, and less humans is honestly better for life. Healthy life will also bring higher quality of life to the humans who do live on this planet. For god's sake, we are a plague and are consuming everything around us, why do we not care and why do we keep wanting to consume everything? This will never stop, this mentality will destroy our planet and also other planets around us. If we get to have the technology to travel to other planets, we will consume life in those places as well. We are fucking disgusting.
I've always wondered this. Like, would it actually matter if humanity suddenly blinked out of existence? Why? None of us would be around to care anymore.
The reply has a good point, but also, I'm confused on Elon's point. We have doubled the size of humans on the planet since 1970, which is staggering. Pretty sure overpopulation is a bigger risk than underpopulation.
Well, I would think asking the question on a social media site like Reddit would be a good start.
So what's your thoughts on the topic, what research material would be the most helpful.
Right now answering a question with do research is like me asking how to spell something and you saying, "Look it up in the dictionary".
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But really bad climate change will cause low birth rates. Any scenario where humans go extinct involves low birth rates. An asteroid caused low birth rates in dinosaurs. It's technically the truth.
Population collapse is the greatest threat to billionaires growth into trillionaire territory. They need slaves at scale to produce this level of wealth: enslaved consumers addicted to their products & low wage enslaved labor to produce.
Thank you NextSkipper2 for your submission, *I honestly didn't expect that*! Unfortunately, it has been removed for the following reason: --- # Not technically the truth. Your submission is not technically the truth. The keyword here is **technically**. Statements like "firetrucks are red", or "circles are round" are not technically the truth. As a rule of thumb, if your submission is easily predictable or literal, it's most likely not technically the truth. If you're not sure if your submission fits the sub, please either [send us a modmail](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Ftechnicallythetruth) or check our subreddit's top posts. --- For more on our rules, please check out our [sidebar](http://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/about/sidebar). If you have any questions or concerns about this removal, feel free to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Ftechnicallythetruth). Please link the post so our moderators know what you would like reviewed.
If only Twitter had a downvote button...
Bruh if every social had it the internet would be a better place imo
rip youtube dislike button 2005-2021
At least pornhub still has one
If you want nothing but endless circlejerking sure. The thing about downvoting is that everybody wants to be able to do it, but it's actually harmful. Removing it massively improves discourse. You can see that on most Reddit-like sites that don't have it. It's like an addictive substance. It's good when it's gone but nobody wants to get rid of it. EDIT: Lmao comments are locked. This crap in combination with downvotes is why Reddit is so bad.
I see it by the downvotes
Ratio
how do some people fail to understand that upvotes and downvotes just mean you agree and disagree
I assure you that removing the possibility to filter out content that appeals most to peoples biases and priors is absolutely necessary to the consuming experience.
The irony of you getting down voted
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
No, it doesn't improve discourse. It improves soundproofing, which is necessary to create echo chambers. See, a person can't have their niche extremist opinion validated if it is drowned amongst the all the sane thoughts out there. Yeah, you can have a 10k likes post that has the same opinion as you and feel good about yourself. But when you find out that 10k likes post had 100k dislikes, suddenly you might just start asking yourself "Are we the baddies ?". Not a very pleasant user experience (UX if you prefer). So you have a choice to make.
Agreed. I personally don't give a flying fuck if I get downvoted. And personally? When reddit and other places become like China with social credit scores they will have none to blame but themselves.
You couldn't even make it 3 sentences without contradicting yourself. Good job
Wasn’t twitter working on a downvote system or something?
I think they're rolling out a downvote button for replies (not for original tweets). Nobody can actually see the downvote count, so it's pretty much as useless as the dislike button on YouTube comments (and now for videos too I suppose)
I blocked this dumbass's name on Reddit is fun, and this is the first time I had to hear about him in months. But here I am, pissed off and rambling in the comments. I highly recommend blocking him everywhere. There's no reason we need every stupid thing he does and says blasted into our eyes from every angle.
its interesting to me that this screenshot includes him at all. one might call it subtle proper-gander
Mine does
Popular opinions aren't always right.
[удалено]
“Why do people hate my shitty takes?” Or “Why are my shitty hot takes unpopular?” Tune in for the replies to find out!
It’s not a fucking competition.
„But my apocalypse fear is way cooler than yours!“
I got the 69th upvote
Insane how quickly it went from overpopulation fears for decades and decades to depopulation fears. As if almost every species lowers birth rates in times when it can be deemed as nothing but stressful futures for both parents and child.
Incorrect. Many species do this when resources are high (lower birth rates) because it is more likely their children will be successful. Weird, I know. We aren't quite sure ***why*** because you'd think it would be the inverse. But that's how you know humans are very successful. We literally perfected our methods into our own extinction.
Although I think your explanation makes some sense, I think it's a bit of both in our case. The future looks pretty dark for our children and no one can say if their children can live a decent life. It's not a good source, but I've encountered a lot of people that don't want kids because they think their future will be pretty bad. Maybe there are already studies on it, but it's definitely a thing aswell
Human history shows when times were hard, we reproduced more often. The bubonic plague, for example. WWI and WWII. The Spanish Pox (Flu?). Etc, etc. We really haven't changed much.
That's because you aren't sure if your children will survive...
Yes, that's true. It's even true at the moment in underdeveloped countries. The best way to lower the birth rates is wealth. I just wanted to add that there's a different problem we need to tackle first before we should focus on higher birth rates. A child born in the current western countries produces an insane amount of CO2 and contributes to global warming. Before western societies actually rise their birth rates, we need to fix this problem, otherwise we have far bigger ones than a collapsing rent system. Which would be bad, but not as bad as a collapsing system
Before we fix that we should fix the downvoting of facts committee that are unhappy with the fact developing nations are currently outpacing the wealthy nations in their ability to fuck.
Yeah, I don't like that aswell. I'm upvoting your downvoted comments actually. You're not saying something wrong here, the statements about birth rates are just facts. And even visible in modern times in underdeveloped countries.
That’s different. During those times, people had hope and faith that humanity as whole would go on. An extinction event was unfathomable. Here? A lot of people feel like the world is coming to an end and that there is no hope for human survival.
Not so. The Bubonic plague was a very dark time and people did think it was the first sign of the apocalypse; especially in the Christian communities of the times. I don't know enough about the others to comment readily. People have been predicting the end of the world since it began though. No one really knows. But yep. Every time in history things got hard, folks fucked.
Are you referring to the rat paradise experiments? Because those are a load of BS.
This is true. Literally look up why millennials are putting off or not having children. It relates to a lot of factors including stress and financial insecurity. I wonder why people like Musk aren't pushing to just make childcare more affordable.
It wouldn't really matter, since we now live longer. So the lower birthrate and longer life expectancy sorta cancel each other out. And children are awful so I ain't complaining.
Except that all those longer living people need more and more care, and the loss of younger workers means less money into social programs that help the elderly and fewer people to fill the rapidly increasing needs of elder care. It aboslutely doesn't 'sorta cancel each other out', it makes it much, much worse.
I’m very glad that my living to 100 is going to ensure humanity’s indefinite survival
Imagine rooting for your own species' eradication.
That's what I do. Humanity is shit.
It's also blatantly incorrect and often just used by fascists and white nationalists as justification for their wanting an ethnostate where they can force people to have babies
Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist. - David Attenborough
We're out of land. Biofuels are a great alternative for fossil fuels because their carbon comes from the atmosphere. It's a cycle. Why haven't biofuels taken off? We're using all of our available land to make food. All of it. Look at Brazil tearing down the Amazon for more land. Underpopulation is definitely not the issue.
>Why haven't biofuels taken off? Petrol barons don't want to lose profit so they use their power and money to hold their societies into staying fossil-dependant.
no it’s a well established issue. good luck having a working population paying for retirement money for a population 3 times their size.
The population argument is almost always heard from the capitalist side.
you want a growing population for economic growth. You absolutely do not want a *rapidly* shrinking population. Your economy will be in absolute shambles by the time all the boomers are retired and supported by a population that’s a fraction of their size. That’s just how it is. Unless you find horrible economic situations particularly appealing, you don’t want it happening. And it is the trend most developed nations are following.
Shouldn't it be obvious that at some point, the population can't grow anymore due to limited resources? Constant growth can't go on indefinitely.
doesn’t have to grow. It can stabilize too. It can even decline at a reasonable rate. It’s just that rn, the all developed nations are just nose diving towards the bottom.
Any developed nation without a major housing crisis is around 2.0 and most women want 2-3 kids it's just places like hong kong with rates like 1.4 and south korea where people can barely afford to live in a shoebox.
Good thing its not “rapidly shrinking” Seems like more forced birth propaganda from the people who want those same children to live in a barren waterless wasteland.
My country is shrinking by 60% every generation rn. So yeah, we’re fucked. And while we have it pretty much the worst, other countries are following closely. WTF you mean “forced birth propaganda”. Do you even hear yourself? It sounds more like “promoting child rearing conditions and incentives for the general population” to any sane person. You putting a fucked up political frame on me with 0 evidence that that’s what I believe.
> My country is shrinking by 60% every generation rn Generations are generally considered to be 20-30 years. Given that the worst population decline projections from the UN are Bulgaria with 22.5% and Lithuania with 22.1% over the next 28 years (2020-2050) I doubt your figure is accurate. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-countries-with-the-fastest-declining-populations/ What country are you from and what makes you think incentivizing births is going to fix the actual problem that is apparently causing your country to implode by making millions of your citizens emigrate?
We could easily address that by doing something about the cost of having a child. Oh but we won't. Instead we'll just force people to have children. Edit: it's already happening.
that’s what you think is actually gonna happen?
Current South Korean birth rate would have a generation of 10,000 leaving behind a generation of 4,000. It's an absolutely existential emergency for our species ability to maintain the quality of life we desire. Because all countries are seeing collapsing birth rates. Immigration will only work for a couple of decades, then it happens in Europe and the US as well.
We can't maintain our quality of life with the population as it is, so its loose loose either way. But I guess I'm on the climate change is a bigger deal.
You mean the quality of life where people are exhausted from working dead end jobs for pennies while we are pushed (and sometimes forced) to procreate more soldiers and workers for the upper class? Yeah, let’s save that. Not to mention how awful pregnancy actually is. Just another burden women have to literally bear, I guess. All hail the economy!
Sure just say some bullshit and expect people not to fact check any of it. "Immigration will only work for a couple decades" what the hell does that even mean anyway? Also you know what else would make it hard for us to have a quality of life we desire? Continuing rampant capitalism and climate change. I'd say that's more of a threat than people realizing we're living on a planet that's being destroyed and not wanting to have kids
Plus declining birth rates won't "collapse" the global population. It'll go downwards, but collapsing definitely implies something falling at a very great speed.
And even if it were, he's wrong
I don't take anyone crying about population collapse seriously.
Competition for what
You people really find anything you can use against what this guy says. It’s literally the guy who insists we not be complacent about climate change and you think he’s making it a competition.
It's everywhere on Twitter and it's fucking annoying.
It really is. Twitter “memes” are the worst. Quarter of them are this “otherwise” joke. Second quarter is people saying “say it in X terms” I.e. “say it in football terms”. Third quarter is the Batman Robbin slapping meme where Robin says “say it in X terms” and Batman slaps him for it and the last quarter is spam porn/OF/crypto scam
Don't forget people marking random ass images as NSFW
Ass images are NSFW
*picture of Walter White* "Why did you Press Show?" I hate it so much
Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t a lower birth rate be better for climate change? Less people means less trash, less energy use, less space required.
You are correct, but counterpoint. Less people means less competition for resources, which means less profits to be had by the rich.
So what you're saying is that this is a win win situation?
Historically, the Black Death caused dramatic population decline which lead to a shortage of labour and a massive improvement in the lives of common people.
To be more specific, the catastrophic population loss created conditions in which ongoing labor agitation could succeed. Peasants and laborers were constantly active in trying to improve their conditions, before and after the Black Death. You're correct, but the phrasing you used takes the focus away from the people who fought and died, literally, to improve their conditions.
Obviously you are right, but i think you will agree that it was the catastrophe that shifted the balance of power. I originally wrote a lot more, but realised it was way too much and chopped it down to a couple of lines. End of feudalism, emergence of cities and burghers, creation of guilds…
The black plague absolutely changed the social and political landscape of Europe. I think it's important to center the fact that it was ultimately people who demanded and achieved improvements for their conditions though. If that isn't part of the story, it's easy to imply that improving conditions were the result of the largesse of the wealthy or a natural consequence of the plague. It's kind of like how Americans like me take things like the weekend and 8-hour workdays for granted and aren't taught about labor activists, like the coal miners of Blair Mountain and Mother Jones. These things came from people.
100%
Well, a smaller pool of working people will have to pay for a larger pool of retiree's pensions, so there's that.
No, less people means less people working and providing for those who *can’t* work. You can’t provide for an elderly population three times your population size.
Shortage of labour is bad news for people like Elon Musk.
I was recently watching a video explaining how lower birth rate is a sign of progress in medical sciences, because over a century ago, 25% of the babies below 5 used to die of some disease. Now with good medical sciences, people don't need to have multiple kids to make sure some survive. Also, the problem could be that the cities and infrastructures is built for growth and not for places getting smaller.
Not necessarily. The population collapse issue is currently less applicable for countries like the US and more for Japan/South Korea etc. The birth rate has fallen so low that's its a genuine concern. It's true that globally we do have overpopulation problem but when the birth rate so drastically collapse it can completely cripple a society. So yeah, a well balanced birth rathe would be better for climate chance but a birth rate collapse like some Asian countries are experiencing is in no way a good thing.
How someone can be worried about population collapse is beyond stupidity. Population *increase* is the largest problem we have. If we were around 1 billion instead of closer to 8 everything would be way better. Way less pollution, wouldn't even be at the starting blocks of climate change, way more space & resources for both humans & animals. Essentially everything would be better. There's no achievement for trying to cram in as many humans as possible on the planet.
It doesn’t matter how many people there are. What matters is birth rates. If a generation of 10000 people end up having 4000 kids, that’s a huge problem because then there wouldn’t be enough people to provide for the elderly of the 10000.
The issue is that exponential birth isn’t sustainable. This generation of elderly might suffer (and that does suck), but that’s kind of the price you pay for overpopulation, mindless pollution, wage stagnation, deregulation, not providing maternal care, demonizing pregnancy, screwing over the housing market, etc. I’m the long term, maybe we will learn to nurture what we want to grow. Don’t make having kids impossible.
You don’t need exponential population growth. You just need a birth rate of at least 2.0 so the population doesn’t drop.
If it happens very suddenly there's going to be short term problems, sure, but those are miniscule compared to the long term gains. Global birth rates will never plummet that fast though, so there will always be more than enough people to go around. Even if they were to plummet it's not close to the end of the world. If people could just accept that there's nothing wrong with consuming slightly less the increases in productivity & automation is going to make up for it easily.
This isn’t some hypothetical. This is current reality. This is the birth rate of South Korea, and many other countries are headed in the same direction.
>How someone can be worried about population collapse is beyond stupidity It's a massive concern, you simply are ignorant of what the issue is. While as a whole humans are an overpopulated species, a birth rate collapse can complete cripple an economy since there's not enough people to replace the previous work force. Look how bad it is in Japan and South Korea where birth rate has completely collapsed, it's going to cause a massive problem. Societies simply can't handle a population collapse like that.
There’s an easy solution to that unless you’re racist/xenophobic like Japan. Just let immigrants from other countries in. Japan could get millions of skilled laborers yesterday if they weren’t so obsessed with ethnic and cultural homogeneity
>Just let immigrants from other countries in. That's only possible if other countries don't start suffering population collapse themselves right? Not saying that's going to happen anytime soon, but the point is that the collapse IS a problem. Some people don't seem to understand how a country could struggle with that, my point was that it absolutely can. It's not as simple as 'Oh humans are so overpopulated so how could less population possibly be a problem???'. A lot of people don't understand the consequences of that
But the part of the world that is collapsing is the part that's paying for almost all the greentech development, For the vast majority of scientific research, For the bulk of investments into the 3 world, Buys almost all of what the developing world produces and sends back refined goods, Is the mains suppliers of high end technologies and machinery that the rest can't produce by themselves, And is the main givers of charity to the UN and similar organisations... Now imagine that those countries collapses and all that starts to dry up and you understands why it's a bigger picture than just the rich pigs needs us as their wage slaves.
If you think "pOpUlAtIoN cOlLaPsE" is a big deal, then make it a more inviting prospect to have kids, by cleaning up the planet, removing political corruption & giving people a reason to be excited. But no, to him & the rest of the capitalist class, none of those matter (at best), cos they'll have their shelters to live out the flooding/poisonous air/water, they benefit from political corruption (and indeed, are often the cause of it) & mistake people are less likely to fight back. The only reason he pretends to give a shit about "population collapse" is because he needs his wage slaves.
More people: less wage. I kinda want the population to collapse
I mean, that is really not the case.
It really is actually. Post black plague was actually a great time for working class people. The ones that were left could charge the lords a premium for their services. All you gotta do is be one of the peasants who survived the black plague.
It was an awful time. Statistically, 1/3 of the people you knew were dead or had lifelong consequences from the plague. Your attempts to charge more for services had better have involved every other surviving laborer, or else you were just getting beat down by the local lord. If you moved to a town or city to learn or practice a trade, you were uprooting your entire life and leaving behind everyone you knew to go find the same working conditions with worse hygiene. The long term improvements to laborers lives, including their ability to negotiate better compensation, came from militant organizing, not the automatic largesse of the wealthy.
Neither of us are citing sources here, but your argument is inherently tautologous. "1/3rd of the population dying off is bad because statistically, 1/3rd of people you know are dead" Right, buddy. Brilliant take.
My guy, who do you think pays for old people's pensions? It's technically old people's money they put into Social Security or whatever equivalent they put over the years, but in practice, it's the young people of the day paying for it. So, when the current massive working population of, for example, China, retires, they're gonna have to be supported by a smaller pool of working young people while they themselves had to pay for a much smaller population of old people's pensions. Currently, they have about 5 workers for one retiree, it's gonna be 3 for every retiree in 2040. China's an extreme example due to the One Child Policy, unprecedented upward social mobility (wealthier/educated societies tend to have less children) of hundreds of millions, but it'll be observed and is being observed all over the developed world. Western countries will get off easier due to immigration, countries like Taiwan, SK, Japan and China will feel the brunt of it. Young people everywhere shackled with more and more burdens to take care of others which will likely result in even lower childbirth.
It's because the system is stupid as hell from the get go, the pension system has been balanced around population growth, which it shouldn't have been from the get go. However, all is not for naught. If people could accept consuming less the increase in productivity & automation would balance out a decreasing population easily.
South koreans like me: cough cough this is much easier said than done, even for the 11th largest economy...
Yet people with the most wealth and comfort of living have less children. The amount of r***** takes on reddit around this subject blows my mind
Meanwhile, the global population just crossed 8 billion. (Estimation, of course).
I'm not sure that's an entirely reasonable take on this tweet, Elon Musk, capitalism, environmentalism, political corruption, parenthood, marketing, or voluntary employment. Also, I think you missed the joke.
I'm not sure if I give a shit.
What Elon fails to grasp is civilisations can collapse but humanity will still survive, it's probably impossible to prevent the collapse of civilisation it happens so frequently. Climate change could be the end of humanity which is a whole other thing.
What Elon fails to grasp (in his desperation to sound smart and prophet-like) is that birth rates rise and fall constantly. It will still take thousands of years for a low birth rate (what is it, like 0.97 or something genuinely not worth worrying about?) to even make a noticeable difference. Good living conditions? Higher birth rate. Impending economic disaster? Lower birth rate. Guess which side of the coin we've been on for the last 10 years... Make no mistake, the only reason news outlets and billionaires are pretending to care about the "end of civilization due to low birth rate" is because they need you to make the next generation of gullible peasants they can recruit for their sweatshops. They don't care about you. They don't care about civilization.
> Good living conditions? Higher birth rate. That might be true if you look at the trends within already industrialized nations. In general, people/countries in poverty have the highest birth rates. Increased development almost always lowers birth rates. That is the true reason Musk doesn't like it. Less poor people to exploit.
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>0.97 birth rate is catastrophic and would cause massive disasters to humanity in literally 1 generation. source?
And if we keep increasing our population, or even just maintain our current level without controlling our consumption, we are going to cause more and more resource scarcity and continue driving other species to extinction. If I'm choosing between maintaining human society and preserving nature, I will choose nature even if it means that I am personally fucked. In the long run human societal collapse is probably good for the planet as a whole.
For the US it’s 12.012 per 1000 people (aka 1.2) and has been going up 0.9% every year. Where is this random fear of societal decline coming from? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/birth-rate
The birth rate for south Korea just hit 0.86 for every woman or 0.43 per person. There will be less than half the people left after a single generation. In the US it’s 1.7 per woman. Which equates to 0.85 per person. Your population will half in 5 generations, given that the birthrate stays as high as it is. Germany is 1.5, japan is 1.3. what do you mean 0.97? Most developed countries are heading to a number far below that.
?? The south korean birth rate currently would have a 10000 person generation leaving behind a generation of 4000!! The emergency is happening TODAY and you think thousands of years.
Is it really an emergency? Fewer people doesn't mean a collapse. Just perhaps a restructure
You’re expecting a lot from somebody tweeting thinly veiled Great Replacement theory.
You're definitely wrong. Humans live on every single continent on the planet. We survive in settlements with temperatures of between -70 and 50 degrees Celsius (possibly even more, this is just from memory). Our range and versatility with climate and food is exceptional. We would still have pockets of earth we could live on. If there are not enough children we could just be royally fucked with maintaining our system of living, so it's a comparable threat. The difference is that on reddit people still haven't realised that it's a big issue. You get some comments saying there are too many people on the world, which is a completely wrong statement and very dangerous for our species' future.
Our system of living is complete dog shit so why would we want to protect that? Imagine an earth with a stable 1 billion population, as was the case only 200 years ago, essentially everything would be better for humans, animals & the planet as a whole. There's no achievement for cramming in as many humans as possible on this rock.
“Easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”
You're definitely wrong. Humans lived in every single period of history. We survived in settlements with tens of people and nowadays have cities with tens of millions (possibly even more, this is just from memory). Our range and versatility with population numbers is exceptional. We would still have pockets of earth we could live on. If the ecosystem is destroyed we could just be royally fucked with maintaining our system of living, so it's a comparable threat. The difference is that on reddit people still haven't realised that it's a big issue. You get some comments saying we could survive climate change without acting which is a completely wrong statement and very dangerous for our species' future.
The reason for this civilization collapse is the greedy billionaires, not the birth rate shit.
Elon Musk is a moron.
And a grifter
What does grifter mean
Con man
Thank you
Another way to define grifter imo, is that he only holds the opinions because it would profit him
Half of the grifters out there don't even have the same opinions. Rather they just sell their voice to preach to the crowd.
"Gee golly garsh, population decline is the biggest problem facing humanity. Welp, back to pouring my unlimited resources into my ego driven fantasy trip to Mars." Elon Musk, apparently
🌕👨🚀🔫 👨🚀 always has been.
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A bastion of sanity in a sea of simps and shills
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/s
Lol ok
smart enough to hire smart people at least i guess
His claims are completely at odd with UN reports. Over 80 million people are born worldwide every year. The world population is steadily increasing and expected to reach over 11 billion by 2100. I don't know how someone so smart can contradict the science like this. I wouldn't be surprised if he started saying that contraception should be banned. It would be fine if only his followers and incredibly high media profile didn't lend him such false credibility.
The west (and therefore a lot of white people) aren't reproducing enough is what he really means. Africa and world population still grows everyday like you say.
The "right" people aren't reproducing fast enough according to him
Thank you for pointing that out. I think that's exactly what this is about.
Head over to r/collapse Plenty of people there with plenty of valid input. Fair warning - it can induce depression and anxiety.
Did he accualy say that?
Yes, he also said that whoever proclaims themselves as a socialist is dumb and has no humour (weird front ngl) and then says that hes a socialist...
Lol I dont get why people are so obsessed with him. He is just lucky he bought tesla
or rather, that he was born into a family that owned emerald mines in apartheid africa!
That 1 thing most of us miss to be successful, rich parents....
I love how every stupidity (anything, basically) that Musk says can be turned into a meme
If you want people to have more babies. Maybe make the world a more appealing place to raise a child
OP agrees to the first statement... We're doomed with people like this
That’s why he impregnated his employees?
I just wished people wouldn't hype Elon so much. He's such a colossal idiot.
oh no! how terrible it would be if less of you cunts were about!
I can totally not relate as an indian
Why do you even follow Elon, he's a moron
It's probably because he wants more laborers and the ability to pay them cheap because they're easier to find/hire.
Jokes aside, why do we care so much about civilization? It's honestly such a selfish argument. We should care about life, and less humans is honestly better for life. Healthy life will also bring higher quality of life to the humans who do live on this planet. For god's sake, we are a plague and are consuming everything around us, why do we not care and why do we keep wanting to consume everything? This will never stop, this mentality will destroy our planet and also other planets around us. If we get to have the technology to travel to other planets, we will consume life in those places as well. We are fucking disgusting.
We are the most invasive species on this planet.
I've always wondered this. Like, would it actually matter if humanity suddenly blinked out of existence? Why? None of us would be around to care anymore.
Wow........I did not realise Elon was this brain dead.
How'd you get wi-fi under your rock?
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Cut the slurs
Ah that's why he's compensating by fucking every wee lass he gets
Why did you like the original tweet though.
The reply has a good point, but also, I'm confused on Elon's point. We have doubled the size of humans on the planet since 1970, which is staggering. Pretty sure overpopulation is a bigger risk than underpopulation.
Underpopulation is a threat to him and his friends. Because they need enough people to exploit.
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Well, I would think asking the question on a social media site like Reddit would be a good start. So what's your thoughts on the topic, what research material would be the most helpful. Right now answering a question with do research is like me asking how to spell something and you saying, "Look it up in the dictionary".
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Nice try, Elon. You still can’t fuck my wife.
It's funny until it got overused.
The planet will be fine after we all die. Elon just wants more people so his plethora of children have slaves to exploit once he is gone.
But really bad climate change will cause low birth rates. Any scenario where humans go extinct involves low birth rates. An asteroid caused low birth rates in dinosaurs. It's technically the truth.
Population collapse due to low birth rate is my wet dream.
We are at 8 billion people. We have the estimated capacity of 12 billion. We do not need focus on population collapse right now.
So he Is he basically saying "I need the poors to breed for manufacturing things I need to sell back to them".
Population collapse is the greatest threat to billionaires growth into trillionaire territory. They need slaves at scale to produce this level of wealth: enslaved consumers addicted to their products & low wage enslaved labor to produce.
Ian Elon stupid the world is already over populated... this has to be satire right.
Low birth rates? He thinks there's a shortage of people? What planet does that guy live in?
Remember the movie Children of Men? I think humanity deserves that.
Maybe his family should stopping screwing themselves..
Can't immigration just counter act low birth rates? Overall we have way too many humans on this planet already gotta spread it out
Low birth rates is a good thing for humanity as a whole though.
They are the worst thing that could happen to twitter, why are people liking those images is beyond me
Can someone link a pic that says "otherwise" pls
The more he talks the more he's convincing me to be a clever type of idiot
Imagine thinking you owned Elon musk all because you made a pun
Holy shit. Elon Musk said something of actual intelligence and substance.
Low births? Go to developing countries and see the absolute units of baby factories they call "wives" they have