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Was thinking about this, and there's a number of things that are coinciding nicely:
1. By the time people will really need to be migrating because their home is underwater, populations will have actually begun to fall in in many places, particularly in the US and east / SE asia, where sea level rise is the real devastator. Africa, the only real place with with a lot of population growth is mostly settled above 20ft elevation. So there should be homes and infrastructure available within the local region when needed.
2. About the time that places actually start to get uninhabitable, say like 2070, there will be huge swaths of arctic land that will be then inhabitable (like only Minnesota cold). In theory climate change is gonna make the sahara green again too when temps are high enough. The rate of land becoming habitable will always greatly exceed the amount of land becoming uninhabitable - by sheer volume of frozen land in the arctic.
3. AI is coming of age at a time when the new college grad population (non physical labor pool) is really starting to drop, so the two can counteract each other. Think about what would have happened if AI came about as the college grad count was going up and up and up, there'd be bigger issues about work availability.
4. Remote work boom is happening as immigration sentiment is souring. Jobs are the reason people immigrate, so hopefully in later decades we can just move the job to the people rather than move the people to the job.
None of this accounts for the restructuring society when the pop pyramid turns into a tornado, that's gonna have to happen regardless. But I don't see there being mass issues with hundreds of millions of people roving around looking for a home. The worst case scenario here is the Arabian Peninsula stupidity finally hits the fan, but that's only like 80 million people.
And I don't see much more land being torn up for cultivation. We have to be near peak land use here soon, and when that starts to fall, it's going to happen fast. Probably faster than peak fossil fuels. Bottom line for the environment is by 2200 things look pretty darn rosey for the planet - most of the current issues won't be future issues and we won't have screwed up much, because we're already near peak cultivation.
Is there any Muslim country with a total fertility rate below replacement? Is there any Muslim country at or near risk for population collapse?
Re: fertility rates--
All populations are subject to the constraints of carrying capacity...and that's a matter of availability of air, food, water, space, competition for recources, etc....Countries with higher childhood death rates have higher birth & fecundity rates and the 3rd world countries have added positive pressure to maintain those high rates due to the 'safety valve ' function of easy access to emigration.
Fox News has just started in on emphasizing the falling birth rate around the world as if that were a bad thing....It's a natural thing.....As population grows, competition for resources Increases and the birth rate approachs the death rate. When those are equal, population remains constant (one in, one out).....because technology is lowering the death rate, birth rate can fall to match it.
The experts tell us the carrying capacity of the planet is as high as 12-14 B humans, but that's calculated assuming food production is the limiting factor....It's not...Jobs/economic factors are the rate limiting factors in an industrialized world.
Many of us think quality of life was better when their were fewer people-- less competition for resources, less negative pressure on the environment, etc....The practical problem is how to return to a lower population without causing more grief than it's worth.....We don:t really have to decide-- MotherNature is doing it for us.
At the very big picture I am approaching this topic thinking a lot about antibiotic resistant illnesses, pesticide resistant insects and herbicide resistant weeds. No one set out to create any of these things, they just spontaneously arose because no antibiotic, herbside or insecticide is perfect.
I see human birth control as functionally akin to pesticide in this analogy and I am thinking where is the resistance to this pesticide (birth control) showing up?
I know people like M3Mitch and AtikisonDan who seem to have zero or little interest in having kids and I have a strong hunch that part of this lack of desire is genetic. But I have also met women with full on baby rabbies. My fiance really wants to get knocked up and I have known other women like her and I suspect that trait is geneticly determined too.
In the past people who were indifferent or against have kids, still had kids because sex is fun and maybe social pressure but now we are at a point in time where that need not occur. I think a lot of the social pressure is gone but I also think birth control also made kids optional for anyone who does not want them.
So I really think the composition of the gene pool is going to shift abruptly. The people who aren't strongly motivated to have kids aren't going to have them. So I expect going forward the share of the population that is born really wanting to have kids will shoot up.
The more religiously devout, the more kids you seem to have, so I am thinking this might be the mechanism this occurs.
I am not making the argument that there is a specific gene for Catholicism or Mormonism but I think think there is a connection between wanting to have kids and religion. The more virulent the form of religion you are interested in, the more kids people seem to have. That seems to hold for most religions which is why I suspect this is a genetic link.
Up thread Sonic was making this argument that the decline of religion and exposure to liberal ideas in college is going to change people make people more liberal. I keep thinking about the Shakers and the Mormons. There was a time when the Shakers were about on par with the Mormons. The Shaker meme was more contagious which is why it initially spread so fast but the Shakers thought sex was immoral whereas the Mormons liked sex and kids. Today the Shaker are footnote in history, but the Mormon meme is still growing vigorously.
In the battle of ideas I am not sold that the best argument wins. Was the Mormon meme any better on the merits than the Shaker meme? Sonic thinks modern liberalism is so appealing it will keep spreading but I see modern liberalism as the next Shaker meme. If you're theology tells you needn't have kids your idea is going to loose to any ideology that favors having kids especially lots of kids.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
Or as Maverick put it in the original movie, "Punch out goose, punch out!"
Excuse me but I have no sense of humor regarding "Baby Rabies".
Or as Maverick put it in the original movie, "Punch out goose, punch out!"
Excuse me but I have no sense of humor regarding "Baby Rabies".
This is sage advice, for those willing to take it. Unfortunately, we tend to dwell on nugatory things and ignore core-matters that deeply affect our lives. To this thread's theme, I wonder what would happen to Humanity if we all thought deeply about risk vs. reward, and gain vs. loss. What if, that which is eminently sensible and wise for us as individuals, ultimately weakens the species? Are we expected to act in selfless altruism? Or is Humanity sufficiently safe, given our general penchant towards self-delusion?
This is sage advice, for those willing to take it. Unfortunately, we tend to dwell on nugatory things and ignore core-matters that deeply affect our lives. To this thread's theme, I wonder what would happen to Humanity if we all thought deeply about risk vs. reward, and gain vs. loss. What if, that which is eminently sensible and wise for us as individuals, ultimately weakens the species? Are we expected to act in selfless altruism? Or is Humanity sufficiently safe, given our general penchant towards self-delusion?
I also think many of us don't analyze the risk vs reward. Wanting a family is simply a part of our being. We look for partners who also want a family. Every choice in life considers the well-being of our family, not me as an individual - career choices, where to live, how to spend our time, etc.
It's how we want to live and what gives us our joy in life.
I also think many of us don't analyze the risk vs reward. Wanting a family is simply a part of our being. We look for partners who also want a family. Every choice in life considers the well-being of our family, not me as an individual - career choices, where to live, how to spend our time, etc.
It's how we want to live and what gives us our joy in life.
It's just different priorities. And that's okay.
For sure! And I don't think that anyone is denying that some folks genuinely want families and kids and will have them. Some can "afford to" and some are going to just jump in and make it work. For sure!
I think that the question, which is stat-driven where we see all of this TFR talk going on, is whether there is enough of that to make up for the others who either do not want to do this, or who may want to but find obstacles in their way that they can't (or feel that they can't) get past. That includes those who don't feel that they can afford to have kids, those who want to but cannot due to health concerns, those who want a family but don't feel that they are able to find an appropriate partner to create and raise one with...etc.
And of course the question of whether a dropping TFR is a crisis for the species or for various segments of it...or not? Which I think, setting aside any frankly racist "replacement" arguments, is really a question of labor. The proportion of productive labor aged people versus those who require care, and whether there are enough of the former to support the latter in all ways. (And, well, if you are me with my own axe to grind, to keep supporting the ever-increasing hunger of the rich and powerful for more riches and more power.)
What seems a bit wild to me is that we have, in the US, low unemployment and high demand for labor, on paper. Every political administration is forever on about how many new jobs they add to the economy. Yet we've seen tech replace a lot of laborers in many areas, too. All those self checkouts and kiosks, automated factory processes and a hundred other things. We even have people here talking about a utopia where the robots have eliminated the need for human labor. Ehm well, why then are there still so many jobs and such a very high demand for humans to work? Does not really seem to be slowing down, despite the obvious and visible efforts to automate. Odd...y'know?
I also think many of us don't analyze the risk vs reward. Wanting a family is simply a part of our being. We look for partners who also want a family. Every choice in life considers the well-being of our family, not me as an individual - career choices, where to live, how to spend our time, etc.
It's how we want to live and what gives us our joy in life.
It's just different priorities. And that's okay.
Different indeed. While endeavoring to be a decent person, helping others wherever reasonable, or at least not traducing their dignity, I never felt membership in family, kin-group, clan, community or even nation. These are all abstractions for purposes of organizing people and getting them to cooperate. But they impede the individual and diminish his personal independence. Thus I dream of a society like "Brave New World", warts and all... a society utterly devoid of even the concept of "family", but where people socialize freely. Reproductive duties are left to factory-hatcheries.
If Mankind necessarily must atomize into families, and reproduce only via families, then indeed we may be in trouble. As mentioned in recent pages in this thread, the more "socially conservative" types will continue to reproduce. Their descendants will overwhelm those of the reluctant. But over time, will such conservatism be conveyed from generation to generation? From a personal quality of life viewpoint, I hope not. From a general species-oriented viewpoint, perhaps I should take the opposite view.
There is also large parts of the world which rely on the children looking after the parents later in life so there is a motivation for the parents there. Particularly the poorer people. Rich in those countries probably employ others to look after them as they get older if the children (if any) do not step up to do it. So it is maybe not the tax or pension aspect which is driving the motivation to have children.
Personally, I think it is because people see what a good life they could have if there are no (or few) children to spend money on and so it is possibly a purely financial reason for limiting the number of kids. Or... it could be that the pool of partners is shrinking or getting worse or possibly that with the rise in mobile phones, we are becoming less and less social and more isolated. I know that here in China the women in the cites have good jobs and are earning good money. Suitable men are in very short supply as women tend to look for similar or better placed men to support them during child-bearing phase. Many men come in from the country to cities looking for better paid work which also means those men are rejected by the women who have good jobs. Of course, it is more complicated than that and there are many different parts to this problem.
I also think we as a society are raping the land and the crops we grow are of poorer and poorer quality. We put more and more fertilizer and pesticides on the land. We feed our raised animals with antibiotics and poor quality feed and so this has to be factored into the equation too.
The government here is also concerned about having enough working people to pay for retirement pensions and it has only been made worse due to the old single-child experiment. Now they are doing all they can to encourage more babies to be born and are giving monetry incentives but it appears as if people are not being persuaded in spite of this. The age of retirement has been raised here as well. So, I think the population rate is declining all across the world and we a need better model for a shrinking global society rather than scrabbling to make up the population numbers. Countries try experiments - thats what they do, and China's experiment of the one-child policy has shown the world that it will not work, so we collectively have to try something else.
Different indeed. While endeavoring to be a decent person, helping others wherever reasonable, or at least not traducing their dignity, I never felt membership in family, kin-group, clan, community or even nation. These are all abstractions for purposes of organizing people and getting them to cooperate. But they impede the individual and diminish his personal independence. Thus I dream of a society like "Brave New World", warts and all... a society utterly devoid of even the concept of "family", but where people socialize freely. Reproductive duties are left to factory-hatcheries.
If Mankind necessarily must atomize into families, and reproduce only via families, then indeed we may be in trouble. As mentioned in recent pages in this thread, the more "socially conservative" types will continue to reproduce. Their descendants will overwhelm those of the reluctant. But over time, will such conservatism be conveyed from generation to generation? From a personal quality of life viewpoint, I hope not. From a general species-oriented viewpoint, perhaps I should take the opposite view.
LOL "Orgy porgy Ford and fun?" I had to read that in 12th grade English. I'm a pretty weird person but I had a whole lot of moments where I raised an eyebrow at just how odd that book was.
We are so busy making dolls and robots to satisfy men's sexual impulses (mostly - I know that they make them for women too, now!) that I'm really kinda surprised we aren't exploring the idea of whether a robot can be crafted that is human-like enough to fool our babies... After all, sex is, in theory, the fun part, right? Why outsource that to tech when we could outsource the raising of small, loud, sticky human young?
(As an aside...many are expressing frustration with the current direction that AI is going, where it's being used to "replace" creative human endeavors like writing, art, music, as opposed to drudge work that could in theory free us up to be doing creative things instead. It would appear that the big money behind the tech has chosen the path of dystopia over the one of utopia for us.)
Of course then you get the problem that will raise howls of outrage in the US...who gets to decide what said offspring are taught by said parentbots? Will they be raised to think critically and make up their own minds on a variety of possible belief systems or will we be attempting to "program" them with some strict dogma and ideology...and if we did, would it stick? And there will always be people who WANT to raise children and have families...how will people raised in those settings mesh with the artificially parented? Or will we just keep them separate, as in Brave New World, with two populations that hopefully never discover one another at all?
But outside of the realms of sci fi, I still believe that between liberal people who DO have kids (I mean, some still do!) and the LGBTQ+ who adopt or do whatever surrogacy or inseminations or what have you...and the significant chunk of conservative-raised kids who defect as teens and adults to the ideologies of the left... I don't think that liberal thought is in any danger whatsoever of being bred out of the populace. At least not in the US/"The West." And in fact I think that it is so appealing to so many people who are merely exposed to it, that more rigidly fundamentalist societies are almost desperate to shut out the voices and ideas of the West or to drown them out in waves of propaganda. Now mind - I am talking about the kind of "liberalism" that is much more moderate, not the leftish fringes, not far-socialism or communism. I'm talking about market based systems with high degrees of individual liberties, a moderate amount of government regulation on business, strong defense without isolationism, a social safety net, promotion and protection of human rights and civil rights...that kind of thing. No "seize the means of production" type stuff.
I mean, I've been digging around and nobody seems to have really solid numbers on this, but putting the picture together from drops in participation in various religions and things, I think that the present day rate of defection from the right to the left among teens and young adults raised conservative could be as high as 30-40%, but I would also add that it is probably majority female.
I find it a little astounding that there is this assumption that kids always march along through all of life precisely as their parents trained them to do...those of you saying this, have you raised any teenagers, ever? Are you exactly the way that your parents raised you to be? Did you not know any young people who ran in the opposite direction from their upbringing, and the more restrictive it was the more they fought it? 'Cause I have seriously seen a LOT of this.
We are so busy making dolls and robots to satisfy men's sexual impulses (mostly - I know that they make them for women too, now!) that I'm really kinda surprised we aren't exploring the idea of whether a robot can be crafted that is human-like enough to fool our babies... After all, sex is, in theory, the fun part, right? Why outsource that to tech when we could outsource the raising of small, loud, sticky human young?
Never mind the robots, why not just professionalize parenting? Orphanages have a stigma. Should they, with proper reform? Given the myriad parenting fails, the broken homes, the abuse and so on, wouldn't it be better if traditional families were supplanted by trained professionals acting as parents? Given the reputed success of large families of the past, we could have a ratio of one adult worker for 7-10 children. Numerically it can be made to work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork
... I still believe that between liberal people who DO have kids (I mean, some still do!) and the LGBTQ+ who adopt or do whatever surrogacy or inseminations or what have you...and the significant chunk of conservative-raised kids who defect as teens and adults to the ideologies of the left... I don't think that liberal thought is in any danger whatsoever of being bred out of the populace. At least not in the US/"The West." ...
The preponderance of flow as youth develop, is from the more religious to the more secular. It is rare for those raised in secular homes to "find god" later in life... but common, for those raised in devout households, to grow lukewarm in their faith as they grow. Thus the more religious parents can serve as Humanity's reproductive engine, seeding (pun intended) for an ultimately more secular populace.
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