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

[plantsdieinmyhouse]

We’re in a ‘global fertility crisis’.

I’m astounded that global (even UK/European) fertility decline to below the replacement rate of 2.1 (thought to have happened now) isn’t in the forefront of most people’s radar. There are barely even any politicians acknowledging it let alone devising policies to tackle it.

Thee are even people who still think we’re in the 70s/80s/90s and ‘overpopulation’ is still an issue.

Once everyone who’s alone now is dead the human race will be in terminal decline.

Nothing else matters if there’s none of us left!

Even on a personal level a large proportion of women don’t have the number of DCs they expect to.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/43a9bd63-25c9-4941-bc99-fc9f7e42c12a?shareToken=29bf27cb9dafe9af7a006bc25355e411

Good. It needs to be in decline.

I mean, in fairness, that would be annoying!

Same. Just get down to where people can live with less fighting and be happier.

my thinking is once the population has reduced to a certain level, people will feel happier (as more housing, more space etc) feel more inclined to have more babies

When we have upside down demographics there is going to be more unrest & suffering. Not just in our country but globally countries will be competing for resources.

Yep there are other concerns such as getting tax or if we’ll be too redundant but due to AI now is a good time to reduce the population.

Who is going to fund all this AI?

I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Women have so many opportunities nowadays, it's not all about having babies and then waiting for our children to have babies so you can be a grandmother.

Haven't they just said we can't afford the assisted dying bill in practice?

Low birth rates effect all of society eg security https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/commentary/pdf/commentary351e.pdf

and the economy in general https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2024/04/10/the-socioeconomics-of-japanese-birth-decline/

the rest of the world will become japan and thats not good!

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/confronting-low-fertility-rates-and-population-decline

tye lack of innovation is difficult to measure but means we won’t have the tech/engineering advances we’ve been used to since the industrial revolution

For every 2 children born in UK another is wanted. Recent UN report found that couples wanted more children than they had -and cited economic and social barriers.

It's people making choices yes but with considereable constraints about how free those choices are.

I also keep reading that it will be fine because once baby boomers die off population goes back to normal - fertilty rate of less than 2.1 means every generation after is smaller than one before - and there always been about 20% of women - fairly consistent- who don't want/have kids - so remaining 80% have fewer and fewer means every generation is smaller than last - so population pryramids remain inverted and that becomes the normal.

Some consquences every later and later retirment ages less government help once do - though bigger voting blocks may cause opposite - more immigration if we can find immigrants as everywhere but sub saharan africa is seeing declines.

I image we'll adapt - Japan and Italy are ahead of the curve so we can watch what they do - but at some point you need to population to come back up again.

If house prices decline that could help - higher prices act as depressors on fertlity. I think some people assume this but it ignores the social aspect - once one child become the norm it's very hard to change that - as China finding out.

Population does need to decline but it need to slump and not be a cliff edge - so we have time to adapt. Though TBH we've had decades in UK and always kicked it further down the road.

It will fund itself by eventually being far cheaper than employing humans.
In our industry, robotics are there, but very expensive. Give it 10 years and itll be perfected, more available and affordable. It’ll be able to work 24 hrs a day and won’t complain about working weekends - the human workforce just won’t be needed in the same way. For us, I’d imagine it’ll probably be one human overseeing 5 robots doing the jobs of 10 people. This is the next Industrial Revolution for sure.

It will fund itself by eventually being far cheaper than employing humans.

But who are the tech companies that are going to provide it cheaply?

There will probably be robot children before too long.

Hasn't anyone on this thread watched 'Humans'

I’m not having children just to ‘save the population’

Cull the old people. Sorted. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think you're assuming the current system of work and taxes will continue unchanged. I believe that in the future there will be a lot more AI, maybe UBI and less need for everyone to work like they do today.
I am sure there are scientists and billionaire tech people working on ideas that we aren't privy to.
It will be a different world that maybe we can't imagine right now. Less people would give everyone more space and in my opinion is preferable to the population getting any bigger.
As for looking after the elderly, in my experience even where there are three or four children, it tends to be one or maybe two of them who step up to help.

I believe that in the future there will be a lot more AI, maybe UBI and less need for everyone to work like they do today.

I get so confused by these points. Who is going to give the AI tech free? Tech billionaires tend to be billionaires for a reason & where does the money to fund UNI come from?

How do you even raise taxes if hardly anyone works?

I don’t think this is the issue. If a company can pay say 12p a day fur AI rather than £800 a day for a coder to give an example it’s easy to see how it will grow.

The hard part is taxes and if too many are unemployed.

I have no idea why you think that I've searched through any (let alone all) of your previous posts. I have not.

And I referenced humanity's role in spreading domestic cats around the world, I wasn't suggesting that you personally did that, or that you somehow gave birth to those cats...

Talk about bad faith arguments. You're begging the question, assuming that putting the planet first means people don't care about suffering or that they even want people to suffer. The point is that suffering is inevitable as the population increases anyway. Resources will become more and more scarce. The planet will heat up at an even greater pace, drying up water sources and leaving farm fields to convert to desert. If you want to talk about suffering, take a look at what drought and starvation do. So anyone could easily point right back at you and ask if you're pleased to see people suffer and die as a result of population growth, but that would be a jerk move, wouldn't it. So why don't you cut the dramatics out and debate honestly.

Suggesting that people who say humans are destroying the planet, therefore the planet would be better off without us (an objective truth) would want a "genocide" of third world people (implying they're racists) is vile.
I don't normally spank people but that post is next level passive aggressive bullshit. You can do better BGD.

Such a simple and unshakeable truth, yet the population growth proponents on here just won't accept it. If they would accept it they would have no arguments left, so I guess they just put their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalala!"

Nothing else matters if there’s none of us left!

seriously? Animals? Plants?

I agree.

Although I still think there’s a nicer path through to a reduced global population and better outcomes. So I wouldn’t do exponential growth no way, but also not the wipe everyone out posts.

Well one solution is that increasingly sophisticated automation technology and AI have the capacity to mean people - individually and collectively - can maintain a given standard of living with less raw human labour input than they used to.

We're only failing to see that as a solution because of the limitations of our political thinking. We live in neoliberal capitalist societies where it's just assumed that the benefits of technological advancement automatically accrue to those who own it. So they're reflected in higher asset values among the rich, increasing inequality and a growing sense of panic among the not-rich (as on this thread) about they're going to be supported by fewer workers when "there doesn't appear to be any solution".

There's no law of physics that says it takes a 40 hour working week for 45 years of your life to have a home, enough to eat, a decent standard of living and enough left over to pay taxes to support those who can't work. Society just happens to be organised that way, and part of that organisation is the tribute that flows upwards to the 1% via unearned profit and capital appreciation of all kinds. Most people didn't think about that too much when the outlook for the other 99% was decent enough (and before the difference started snowballing). Now we choose to start thinking about it, or not.