Far-right authoritarian pundits and political actors, from Matt Walsh to Elon Musk, all seem to have gotten the same memo instructing them to fixate on “low” fertility and birth rates. Musk has claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming” and that it will lead to “mass extinction.”
Some liberals are flirting with this narrative, too. In a February New Yorker essay, Gideon Lewis-Kraus deploys dystopian imagery to describe the “low” birth-rate in South Korea, twice comparing the country to the collapsing, childless society in the 2006 film Children of Men.
It’s not just liberals and authoritarians engaging in this birth-rate crisis panic. Self-described leftist Elizabeth Bruenig recently equated falling fertility with humanity’s inability “to persist on this Earth.” Running through her pronatalist Atlantic opinion piece is an entirely uninterrogated presumption that fertility rates collected today are able to predict the total disappearance of the species Homo sapiens at some future time.
But is this panic about low fertility driving human population collapse supported by any evidence?
The only problem with low birthrate is an organizational one, where you don’t have enough young population to support the old population. But to me this just means that the organization isn’t set up correctly.
“Just an organizational problem” is a hell of a problem though.
We’d already be transcendent if it weren’t for that little thing, heh.
Organization aside, it’s also (IMO) a productivity issue without enough automation to take care of elders, or good enough healthcare to keep them “young.” Unless you want to force old people to work.
“Just an organizational problem” is a hell of a problem though.
As in, it’s not a threat to humanity. It’s completely different type and order of magnitude.
We’d already be transcendent if it weren’t for that little thing, heh.
Ah I see you’re not discussing in good faith. So this will be my only reply.
Organization aside, it’s also (IMO) a productivity issue without enough automation to take care of elders, or good enough healthcare to keep them “young.” Unless you want to force old people to work.
Elder care is not really a physical labor problem, it’s a financing problem as it’s organized right now. If a person costs more than they paid into the system (on average, on a large scale, why do I bother I know you’re not discussing in good faith), then the problem is with the system. We should not need everlasting growth so that each generation gets out more than they paid in.
Elder care is not really a physical labor problem
The hell it isn’t! As societies approach 1:1 between working and elderly they quickly run into the problem of having enough people to do elderly care and do regular work. Japan is already experiencing a shortage of caregivers and the worst of it won’t arrive until 2050.
We should not need everlasting growth so that each generation gets out more than they paid in.
Then you are going to have to start killing the elderly because the plain and painful truth is that they are expensive. They require increasingly costly medical care to keep them alive along with increasing physical assistance as they age.
There is no magic wand to be waived where today’s elderly DON’T get out more than they put in…not unless they die when they quit working.
