AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

Yep. Plus they're stronger, thus more able to do the intense physical labour of the future, such as trying to farm in drought conditions. It could also be argued that races/cultures who are not producing enough children to pay for future needs should get fewer resources, or people who are unemployed (thus are not deemed "productive") should get fewer resources. It's a dangerous line of reasoning in addition to being ethically repugnant.

Your post just before this was a reply to me? That's odd, because it has nothing to do with my post. What has naivete got to do with it? My objection was an ethical one, not a pragmatic one, and just being dismissive by saying I'm naive (which is strange, because other people say I'm cynical) is non-responsive to my points re; human rights and ethics. What is your stance on those matters?
I don't even disagree with what you say in that post, so colour me confused as to what we're supposed to be debating.

I seldom miss an opportunity to promote Kurzgesagt - a YouTube channel that I think does an excellent job of distilling complex scientific, political, technological and other issues into digestible and well-sourced videos.

They have a couple on the birth rate issue, but their most recent (focused on South Korea) is possibly the better one, as its something of a case study:

and on Climate Doom:

That a degree of resource-management happens in Healthcare is indeed undeniable, and it would be absurd to completely disregard the characteristics of patients.

A fairly obvious example is organ transplants, where a child would likely be given priority overly an elderly person, or a non-alcoholic person given priority over an alcoholic.

I would think that, for most people, there being some degree of rationing is uncontroversial but it is, of course, fraught with ethical concerns.

In terms of what's been discussed in the thread, however, the PP you're responding to is falsely asserting that people are advocating for withdrawing care from the elderly - which isn't the case or, at least, is a gross misrepresentation.

The well-known problem of an aging population, that governments have already struggled with, is that the proportion of retirees is ever-increasing and the proportion of working age people ever-decreasing, which renders the system unsustainable.

If this type of demographic change continues (and its projected to not only continue but accelerate), and absent a radical solution yet-to-be found, we either preserve 100% of existing entitlements until the system collapses (leaving future generations in complete economic ruin, with little-to-no state support) or we try to find a more sustainable level of state-support.

Oddly, some of the same people who care about resource scarcity and management in an environmental sense are unwilling to acknowledge the issue in a societal or economic sense, and think you're a monster if you think that sustainability needs to apply in that context, too, so that future generations aren't left with nothing.

Of course elderly people are deserving of care but not just today's elderly - tomorrow's too.

Sorry, that was meant to be in reply to this post

I think you're being extremely naive and also deliberately ignoring reality. I saw a health trust on TV the other day saying they'd developed a system to identify breadwinners and fast track them for treatment. They have found this prevents a lot of knock on problems. It means people can get back to work and this can prevent a whole family sometimes falling into poverty and homelessness with the cascade of health and social problems this can then bring. The health trust said this approach was actually saving time and money. If these doom and gloom population predictions come true there won't be the people available to deliver all this care and healthcare for the elderly. imo it makes sense even now, in the UK to prioritise working people for healthcare if conditions stop them working. Let's say you have a year long wait for a new knee (setting aside for a minute we shouldn't have a year long wait) we have a finite number of knee surgeons all working flat out. One of those knee surgeons needs a new knee and can no longer work without one. Imo it would make absolutely zero sense, for the sake of fairness, to stick the knee surgeon at the back of the year long queue (now 14 months long because you are one knee surgeon down) rather than leapfrog them to the front and get them back to work.

the human race wont die out but western cultures such as ours will. there are plenty of countries reproducing at more than the required repopulation figure. there are segments of society in uk reproducing at higher rates. its more a question of how much do we want to preserve our culture and way of life for our children's children.

Could be the tag-line for the whole AIBU board, tbf.

Well, I’m sure arguing online will fix it.

I haven't been passive aggressive about anything, I've been overt and transparent as to why I dont agree with people.

Including pointing out the extreme nihilism inherent in the many posts that see human extinction as a good or essential thing, for the sake of the planet, and the logical endpoints of that level of contempt for human life.

I've also acknowledged that I dont believe people actually have the same degree of contempt for current or future humans, and their happiness and security, as their pro-extinction posts suggests, and that I think they're simply being trite.

The climate crisis is indeed dire but what you're peddling - that the inevitable end point is extinction - is not true. A decade or two ago, an apocalyptic level of warming was within the range of reasonably-possible outcomes. The consensus is that human efforts to limit warming have very likely averted the worst possible outcomes (while, sadly, failing to achieve the best). The climate crisis is now extremely unlikely to lead to extinction, but humanity still needs to work hard to minimize the extent of (now inevitable) warming.

Which is why the nihilism you're peddling, regarding the inevitability of extinction, is also a harmful attitude, as it breeds defeatism and inaction on the environment.

It is also extremely rich for you to accuse anyone else of intellectual dishonesty. I dont believe I have misrepresented anyone - I have probed and counter-argued - you, on the other hand, are repeatedly misrepresenting other people's arguments. Its your dishonesty (or perhaps, genuine inability to understand what others are saying) that I find objectionable.

Yup. You could argue that as men hold the most power/income we should focus our medical resources on them instead of women.

Yes, I have heard that idea expressed many times and I can't support it. The idea that some people deserve resources more than others is abhorrent to me. I understand that it makes a certain amount of pragmatic sense on the surface. The problem with this idea, beyond it being ethically unacceptable, is that human rights laws exist to protect us from discrimination based on our age and ability. Those laws would have to be scrapped, which means they're also open to being scrapped when it comes to sex, race, etcetera, if it is deemed to be practical by those in power.

What, you didn't like my version of a "thought experiment?" 😄 So much so that you start name-calling and run away? How very mature.

What you have been doing is a passive aggressive form of attacking people who disagree with you and you know it. There's only so much of that I can tolerate. I actually held out for quite awhile before criticizing your ridiculously transparent "thought experiments" and I went pretty easy on you, but you still kept up the same intellectually dishonest tactics. You don't like it when it's pointing back at you but you're perfectly happy to dish it out.

No worries, I'll trouble you with injections of reality no longer.

With regard health care rationing, I read an opinion once (and this wasn't a mad hairbrained thing, it was considered allocation of scarce resources) that when healthcare in limited supply, resources should be focused on the usually fit healthy working age population. Children (beyond vaccinations), the elderly and the disabled getting low level care. Reason being, the above groups use up vastly disproportionate amounts of healthcare and very often just die after it all anyway. Whereas the working population are carrying everyone else, scarce health care has to be focused on them to keep them healthy and working.

Uuurghhh...i should've walked away.

Nobody is arguing for population growth, as has been clarified repeatedly, so stop with the dishonesty.

People are advocating for a slower decline, instead of a cliff edge one - precisely because of what the former would mean for the social safety net.

You'd know that if you stopped to actually read what people were posting, instead of screaming and flailing about the inevitably of extinction via the climate crisis (despite the scientific consensus being that, while the climate crisis remains extremely serious, we have likely averted an apocalyptic level of warming).

We've missed our chance to achieve the best possible outcome, have averted the worst, and now its a fight to limit the severity of warming (on a scale of "pretty bad" to "very bad").

I'd also point out that the "its all futile, we're all doomed, everyone is going to die" approach you are taking is not only counter to the prevailing consensus but also generally criticized by many real environmental advocates because it leads to nihilism, indifference and inaction.

Plus the population proponents are forgetting that health care resources are also eaten up by pregnancy, birthing care and children's medical needs. If the resources are scarce we can't afford that either. We certainly wouldn't be able to afford to take care of all the millions of kids with ASD, ADHD and other disabilities, and I say that as someone who is on the spectrum and has a daughter with ADHD and cerebral palsy. So the scarce resources argument easily works both ways, which makes it a stupid argument for population growth and limiting health resources for the elderly. We have some of the same people who are callously proposing letting the elderly go without care squawking about people not caring about
suffering and death just because they are admitting that we messed up the planet and it would do better without us. Utter hypocrisy.

I haven't misunderstood anyone and I'm not sure why you even think I have...

It makes her feel better though so let her have it 😆

I haven't misunderstood anyone and I'm not sure why you even think I have...

What urgency? That's another faulty assumption. We all know it's going to be a slow death, not a sudden, mass extinction. It's pretty much inevitable now no matter what we do. What you are seeing is acceptance of that reality and your reaction is to fight against that because you don't want to accept that we're doomed. That denial is your problem and it could well be you're just using these "thought experiments" in which you accuse people of being happy about death and suffering to help facilitate the denial. You might want to give that some thought.

I think it’s something easy to type but in reality people would be against it

yep

Read the comments again. They are saying they're glad because it's a good thing for the planet. They are not glad because they are happy for people to die. Do you see the difference? They are not personally getting pleasure from people dying, they would have to be straight up psychopaths for that to be true. So stop flogging that dead horse for goodness sake. You've misunderstood, which happens to everyone, just get over it and try again with an argument that's not predicated on a faulty assumption.

They're probably not truly bonkers, but they are deep in denial about how dire the situation with climate change actually is. That way they can still have the conveniences of buying a lot of crap they don't really need, they can drive their gas guzzling vehicles and they can live in large, resource eating homes without guilt. All this noise about declining population numbers may just be a device to facilitate that denial as well for all we know.

I think it’s something easy to type but in reality people would be against it

I think you're speaking for yourself.

If you read back through the thread, other posters (usually relatively fleeting commenters) are purporting to enthusiasticly embrace the idea of extinction.

I doubt their attitudes are genuine, and thats what I'm challenging.