The world population is expected to start shrinking within this century after hitting a peak in the mid-2080s due to lower fertility levels, particularly in China, according to the latest projection by the United Nations.
Fucking good.
Seriously.
The only people with reason to be concerned is the ultra wealthy
At literally every point of modern history, a reduction in the amount of humans was beneficial for the vast amount of humans in the long run.
Like, even the Black Death led to reduced wealth inequality and the beginnings of workers rights.
When labor is scarce, workers get treated better. When there’s a surplus of workers, people are desperate for a job and will work for little.pay in unsafe conditions.
There were riots during the Black Death too. Lots of bills and an overtaxed population lead to the Great Rising.
However, who replaces the aging workforce? Who pays for social security? Back in the 60s, it was a ratio of 6 workers per 1 retired. Now, it’s 3:1. Soon, it’ll be 2:1. That’s bad. Very bad.
A smaller working population and a large inactive population create huge labour shortages which must be filled by migrant labour which creates additional problems.
One solution is enabling people to work for longer but this is challenging. Do we push the retirement age to 75? What about the declining health and abilities of ther population.
People are having children much later than normal. Births under the age of 20 have dropped 90% in the last 10 years. We are aging faster than we are replacing.
I was hoping productivity or efficiency would make up for it but looks like max we have gotten is about double efficiency. 1960 TEP is 66 on the scale and today 2022 and 2021 is 164-168. Meaning we are 100% more effective. So 2 workers are more like 4 workers in the 1960s. But it isn’t the same as 6 to 1 ratio sadly
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.mercatus.org/research/data-visualizations/how-many-workers-support-one-social-security-retiree
Wtf. So instead of the rich eating the poor the poor should just eat the poor to improve the labor market in their favor?
Just don’t breed like rabbits and stay away from religions and political parties that like to forbid anything that goes against popping out babies.
If you strike and there’s no scabs for them to hire or the scabs are even more expensive (because they aren’t desperate for a job) then it becomes cheaper to actually give the workers what they want.
It is the opposite of the poor eating the poor. Being educated, having fewer kids later in life makes getting out of the poverty cycle a lot easier for anyone.
Start with the rich and then move into each other. The rich have all the resources so eating them will free up vast amounts of wealth that will solve the problems of all of us. Food, housing, work; we live in a potentially scarcity free world - it’s just the rich getting in the way.
reduction in the amount of humans was beneficial for the vast amount of humans in the long run.
This is literally Nazi speech. This is literally genocide rhetoric. Shame on you.
The Black Death lead to people literally dying. It wasn’t beneficial in the long run at all. It killed millions. That’s a lot of human data both in DNA terms and knowledge that died. That’s a lot of inventions dead.
When workers must work for a capitalist, or a king, or a pharoah, and they lose their bargaining power, their conditions are bad. Not when there’s “lots” of them. That’s just the nature of humans being a social species, we are made for “lots” of us. As long as we are each empowered, then having people alive and thriving is no issue.
The global population, currently at 8.2 billion, is projected to reach approximately 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s and then gradually decrease to around 10.2 billion by the end of the century, according to the U.N. report on world population prospects released last month.
2 billion more people than we have now isn’t much of a decrease… I don’t know about maintaining that trend long enough to actually decrease from what we have now, which is already overpopulated.
We’re not really overpopulated, we just live unsustainable lifestyles and overconsume especially at the top of the wealth rungs. Why go for population degrowth as the solution before tackling the myriad other city planning, economic, and wealth-inequality-rooted problems?
Is it easier to imagine great famine and to wish for even more declining birth rates than to ask questions like: “should we be moving past capitalism?”
That’s a pretty long prediction window, no? I feel like a lot can happen in even just 20 years to mess up any assumptions, like open war between super powers (maybe China and USA over Taiwan), big water migration movements by worsening climate change, new pandemics, countries intervening in their sinking birth rate trends, things like that.
The problem is that even if everybody started fucking now, it wouldn’t change the fact that many countries including China are on pace to not be able to even maintain their current GDP in the 2030’s and other than doing something to replace human labor (bringing people in or automation) to maintain or increase their GDP, there is nothing else they can do. It is too late.
Everyone is in trouble here but some are worse off than others. Especially when they’re going to have to figure out what to do with people that will be aging out of the workforce.
Pandemics and wars do not appreciably increase birth rates.
Countries attempting to stem population decline have generally had poor results, case in point, Japan, Korea and most other developed economies.
The UN estimate has always been too large. Its methodology is flawed.
More realistic estimate would be that the population will start to fall sooner. Around 2040-2060.
Seeing as this will start decreasing in 2080s, I will live through the peak years… at best Iwill be one of the decrease contributors. Yay?
