Comment on This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 months agobut unless extreme measures are taken once it gets to that point, civilization as we know it will collapse.
Population decline is a good thing. Raising a child requires more resources than caring for elderly. When the elderly die, that frees up even more land and resources for the next generation.
The Black Plague caused the Renaissance. WW2 killed almost exclusively all the healthiest and most productive workers at the prime of their working lives. The result was the survivors experienced unprecedented wealth for a generation.
When the population declines such that a person with a high school diploma can once again own a home and support a family of 4, the population will increase again.
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 2 months ago
I agree that a Phoenix will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, there will be many ashes, you and I and most of us posting here likely included.
But we are long overdue for a reset. Maybe this time we can just skip the internet infrastructure.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t understand why you think there would be any ashes? Extreme population decline like the Black Plague or WW2 caused extreme wealth. Slow decline will cause a slow increase in wealth in the following generations. If we have half the people we only need half the goods manufactured. We had only 4 Billion people in 1980. It wasn’t a post apocalypse hellscape. So if we returned to 4 billion it would be fine.
The only people who suffer from population decline whether it was the Plague or great wars are the wealthy because their livelihood comes from skimming a little from all the workers.
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 2 months ago
If you reduce the population as fast as its decreasing now, lower than replacement rates, all modern conveniences including infrastructure and faith in the economy are going to take a hit. That includes the internet and hospitals and all internet-dependant companies. Public utilities like trash, shipping - we already saw how many products were discontinued and companies went out if business because of the inability to get parts, over a 6 month (at first) brief shortage of drivers.
Throw in experienced power plant operators, people that install and maintain pipes and lines, water treatment plants, public transit, everything you can think of will be affected. And many things most people never think about.
Immigration is a way to slow it down, but almost every country on Earth has falling birth rates at the moment. Immigrants coming from, say, Mexico and Canada to US will only delay the problem, and cause a larger problem for those allied countries we rely so much on.
You can find pros and cons, and it’s been a while since I did heavy research into the subject, but my takeaway was that once we reach a certain point, mass deaths will start to occur, especially in population centers. Rural communities won’t be affected as much provided they have plenty of guns for defense, livestock, and close community.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It takes virtually nothing to scale down. Again see WW2. Millions of the best workers in Europe, Asia, and America were dead. No one needed to put in overtime to not grow wheat for the dead.
I don’t want to keep saying it but WW2. The working population was decreased far faster than today. You don’t need extra factory workers to not produce iPhones.
I ran a large internet company. You don’t need many people to serve millions of customers. If there were less people, there would be less equipment installed. Less customers means less employees needed. So service would not suffer. If anything it would improve. Because Internet servers/bandwidth is built with oversubscription built in. You don’t really have 100mbs service. It’s that peak usage for your local neighborhood is modeled such that as long as everyone isn’t using maximum bandwidth all the time, you have the illusion of 100mbs at any time. Reducing customers over time means that existing networks and servers could handle unusual loads without slowdowns.
It’s the same with hospitals. You don’t need more doctors when you have less patients.
You don’t need parts because you have less people that want to buy your product.
When German and Japanese factories were bombed and the experienced operators were killed, someone else was trained and took their place the next day.
As older people die, you get younger people to take their place. You don’t need population growth for that. If anything, population decline means the younger generation gets better training because there are more of experienced people giving the fewer younger people their knowledge. Instead of one teacher with 50 students it can be 1 teacher with 10 students.
Population decline doesn’t mean tomorrow 99.9% of the entire planet suddenly disappears tomorrow. We have had far more rapid population declines in history and the results have always been overwhelming positive.