The World Population Crisis NO ONE Sees Coming

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

Click betterhelp.com/twobitdavinci for a 10% discount on your first month of therapy with a licensed professional specific to your needs.

[@hououinkyouma1458]

We're unlucky, more humans means the cost of each humans are low.Humans are expendable! And btw the governments will eventually take care of births.Humans will be grown in surrogate mothers for optimum performance.

[@RCdiy]

I don’t have children so how about restricting social security payments to what I put in plus inflation?

[@hououinkyouma1458]

with greater automation and use of AI we wouldn't need the extra social security. Ai will take care of the elderly efficiently@@RCdiy

[@jasonhesson1030]

Point of order in regards to Russia. It's not the fall of the Soviet Union or the war in Ukraine that's shrinking Russia's population. It's the "Double Echo" from both the famine and purges before WWII and the loses from WWII at12.7% (both around 20m dead). The Soviet Union and thus Russia never had a 'baby boom' era post war like the rest of the war which replaced these population loses and thus they're now seeing the effects. Basically Russia is experiencing what the world will a hundred years earlier. RealLifeLore has a good video on this.

[@doorwhisperer]

How 'bout creating content that doesn't send people to therapy

[@TheDeej26]

Maybe we need a system that doesn't rely on growth.

[@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy]

Yes, for most of human history we didn't have economic growth.

[@MelissaThompson432]

It does seem like today's Tier 1 economy is a pyramid scheme that's running out of friends-of-friends to rope in....

[@brianhirt5027]

@@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy No, we just had war & slaughter instead as every two-bit shitbag fought their neighbors to increase their personal power & wealth. Clearly a much better arrangement, right?

[@brianhirt5027]

Who says that needs to stop? We got a functionally endless supply of resources to feed it. Just look UP. All we gotta do is climb into the sky & figure out how to survive & thrive there.

[@_Abjuranax_]

We have the technology to feed 200 times the current population.

[@peterp5099]

The main problem with increasing the retirement age is not riots like in France, it’s the fact that living longer doesn’t mean being longer fit and healthy enough to deliver productivity on a competitive level. In my country, retirement age was increased to 67, but barely half of the people above 60 actually get a job. You have ever seen a 65 old grandma almost dying while pulling a pallet truck at snail speed, then you understand why increasing the retirement age doesn’t solve workforce scarcity.

[@nickonicifor5638]

In my country 65.

[@crevard203]

The way I see it is it's just a band-aid solution even head in the sand approach. Question is how low high will they increase it?

[@peterp5099]

@@crevard203 I assume they will increase it until there is virtually no retirement, just people who are officially unemployed, and in reality just too old and frail.

[@cavalieroutdoors6036]

​@@peterp5099I think that's the ultimate plan - you work until you either (magically) saved enough on your own to retire, or until you expire. But never actually retire.

[@earlysda]

peter, let's get out in the real world and see many in their 70s and 80s still working productively.

[@arcticpilotshow4440]

When young people are struggling to settle, e.g. buying an apartment and social security is scarce, it's no wonder that having children is not on the priority list.

[@sebastianwetherbee9465]

The idea that it's economic is plain wrong. It's cultural. Even the poorest people in developed countries are wealthier than most humans across history who still managed to procreate. Wealthier countries have the lowest birth rates, and education, wealth, secularism, and urbanism all predict low birth rates. It's not that the life we need is expensive, it's that the life everyone wants is expensive. Within most countries it's the hyper-traditionalist religious groups that are reproducing fastest, from the Amish in the US to the Orthodox Jews in Israel. And they tend to make do with a lot less.

[@ErikratKhandnalie]

@@sebastianwetherbee9465 I'm sorry but you're just wrong. It is literally just numerically objectively more difficult and expensive to house yourself now than fifty years ago. Wealth is relative. The poorest person int eh US might have more money than a well off person elsewhere. But, they need far far more to survive. It doesn't matter that fifteen dollars an hour would put you in the one percent in Bangladesh. Here in America, that won't even keep a roof over your head most of the time. Also, culture is adaptive. The culture is shifting away from having children precisely because of economic reasons.

[@sebastianwetherbee9465]

Talking about relative wealth means we're talking cultural expectations, not actual needs. Compared with the wealthiest moment in human history? We are the next most wealthy after the baby boomers in the late 20th century... And sure, it is more expensive to live in a developed economy, but we're not talking about literal survival, we're talking figurative survival, meaning "being able to have gaming consoles, spend time out with friends, have weekends off, have a car, eat really nutritious food, get a higher degree in a subject we find meaningful, etc etc." Don't be so melodramatic about it. Even someone living in a trailer park has all the basic necessities covered. And yes, culture is often adaptive but it can also be maladaptive. We're in an environment where a lot of our cultural values have twisted to start producing maladaptive behavior. At some point there will be a correction. This isn't about what people actually need (economic) this is about what people want (maladapted culture) @@ErikratKhandnalie

[@strifelife4003]

​@@sebastianwetherbee9465 some of the most out of touch shit I have ever seen. As a 'younger adult' in the US - I can't afford a house, and the economy is just generally worse now than the guilded age. I can't afford to exist, but this isn't an economic problem. Whatever helps you sleep at night

[@ErikratKhandnalie]

@@sebastianwetherbee9465 @sebastianwetherbee9465 No, talking about relative wealth means that it *literally costs more to live here than it does to live elsewhere*. Like, pull your head out of the sand, dude. Are you really trying to tell me that you could survive in the US on five dollars a day? Or are you just conveniently omitting "home", "healthcare", and "food" from your calculations? This isn't a culture thing, it is an economic thing. It is literally just more expensive to live here than it is to live in, say, Malaysia. The wealth of our society is meaningless to most people when the overwhelming vast majority of that wealth is concentrated into a tiny handful of pockets. Might as well go to the Congo and declare that, because the country is so rich in mineral wealth, nobody there must go hungry. It's just an awful take all around. You talk about "figurative survival", but then list things that either ridiculously cheap to the point that they barely even factor into the conversation(game console? Seriously? You think people are broke because they bought a console? A console plus like three or four games is barely half of a rent payment for most people. Next to the library, is basically the cheapest form of entertainment available. Nobody is missing rent payments over a damn Xbox ffs), or that we do actually need to survive. In ninety percent of this country, you absolutely *do* need a car to survive. It is not, in any sense, a luxury. I'm sorry, but you just have a hideously skewed perspective on what people are struggling with, and it betrays the fact that you've never really had to struggle yourself, at least not for a very long time. Things have only gotten harder in the past few decades. People are legitimately *struggling* - not for all that silly nonsense you mentioned, but just to keep a roof over their head and food in their kid's mouth. Stop downplaying the real suffering that people in this country are facing and realize that this problem is, inherently, fundamentally, *economic*, and anything cultural is merely a byproduct

[@damonryan2861]

When the baby boomers were booming there were many more single income homes. However, since 1978 the average salary for the CEO of a company has gone up 1,478%. An example with my wife's company her bonus can be paid out as high as 10% of her salary. In her yearly performance review she exceeded expectations. She recieved 22% bonus payout of that 10% and no pay raise again for three straight years. Her CEO's bonus paid out at 242% of his annual salary and he received fotry-nine million dollars in stock for his performance last year. The land of milk and honey has turned to the land of hate and money. I fully understand people not wanting to have kids. They can live a much more comfortable lifestyle since CEO's are focusing on taking the whole pie and leaving their employees with crumbs.

[@joeylawell3590]

This

[@MikeWazowski680]

@@labgirl3501 I just looked it up and will watch it!!

[@adaiku]

You are right. Somehow we have handed our country and economy to the hands of a few whose greed eclipses anything we have seen before, to the detriment of the vast majority, whose awareness of which, for most, is eclipsed by endless social squabbles that falsely pit one side against another... lib, dem, republican, conservative, etc., etc..

[@kirkjohnson6638]

The amount of money going to the high paid CEOs is very small. If their entire compensation were redistributed to the "workers", it would only give them a miniscule raise. The problem isn't at the top end of the income spectrum, it's at the bottom end where billions of poor people are living off the productivity of the middle class.

[@capo4ever334]

@@kirkjohnson6638dude you couldn’t be anymore false in that second part😂😂😂😂

[@TheMuffinBagare]

As a swede, we already have many of the benefits for having children (such as paid maternity/paternity leave), but we still have this same problem with a birth rate that is dropping. So it is not as easy as implementing a few policies to reverse this trend.

[@grahamcook9289]

No man in his right mind wants to have anything to do with a Swedish woman. That's the truth.

[@VxO4fame]

Same in germany. On the other side as a single person u find it even unfair . Even couples without kids pay less than singles.

[@gaelle4328]

@@VxO4fame For Sweden that is not the case we do not have joint taxing at all.

[@topsuperseven7910]

yep, everywhere governments are in control of 'incentivizing behavior' we have less and less children. hopefully some academics and social engineers or youtubers figure that out. They'll probably insist it just needs MORE social engineering, more 'behavior punishment/reward' from government force and more redistribution of wealth. THEN they're sure it will work.

[@jaytbo5676]

That's cause the only reason growth was so high is because pre modern medicine as many as 70% of children died before turning 18, since they were needed as workers families then had many to make sure they made it through. Then we hit the industrial revolution and entered a transitional stage where people were still having that many kids but the kids were not dying off, so population numbers BOOMED, once we realized that was the case it became unsustainable and pointless to have so many so a majority of people stopped. Now that 99% of kids will make it and kids are a net loss not a net gain in income/work, people only need and want one or two. It's natural and for the record the transitional period trashed our planet with overpopulation so it had its downsides too. Personally economic woes is not making any of us face extinction, so I think we are better off making it through this transitional period then trying to keep population numbers up. I'd give up excessive consumption for not going extinct anyday lol

[@Radhaun]

I don't remember where I saw it, but I think the problem is pretty neatly summed up by "plants are the new pets, pets are the new children, and children are a pipe dream" in terms of how much just living costs. I don't think social media is why kids aren't dating. I think having to work wage-slave jobs and use every minute of time making money rather than connections is having a much harsher impact.

[@Radhaun]

@traybern Because cellphones are literally an essential for life in the 21st century. It's how people access the news, it's how people talk to one another, keep up with emails, read/listen to books/podcasts/scientific literature. Extraordinarily powerful companies have pushed all of us to be on our phones constantly, social media has branded itself as the only way to connect with people and Gen Z and Gen Alpha have grown up knowing nothing else. They aren't "playing on their phones" They're interfacing with the world in the way they have been taught to. Just like TV for Millenials and Gen X and Radio for boomers.

[@thewarriorandthegarden1562]

Also people live the city if they just leave and gain some independence it's doable and stable to have a family and a community

[@rythmblood27]

Please don’t take this as a an attack, but working for minimum wage is not new. As a kid I had my first job at 14. By 19 I was working 2-3 jobs making $5.25 to to like $6.50/hr. for about 7 years. I hated it….it did suck. My friends had similar situations unless they went to college. And yes I know inflation should be used to adjust minimum wage. But the $15/hr offered now is incredible to me, but it’s probably adjusted to be about what I made. But it didn’t stop us from having girlfriends. But if I had the choice, hell no I’d rather not work that many jobs (low pay & no insurance).

[@Radhaun]

@@rythmblood27 No attack taken, but most jobs are not offering $15/hr in my area and a lot of them require a degree. In 2021 I worked at a call center, if you had a bachelors (didn't matter in what) you made $13/hr if you didn't you only made $11. For the city I was working in, you have to make $17.72/hr for it to be considered a living wage (according to one estimate by MIT). When we first moved to the city, my spouse was working on their master's and working in their field was only making $10/hr (2016), we were living in the cheapest studio apartment we could find and went into debt just keeping ourselves fed and the car running. I'm not sure when you started working, but it might be a good idea to look up a price adjuster and input both what you were making, and see what the costs of goods and services at that time were. Inflation can really pull things out of perspective.

[@Boonton2010]

This isn't the case. It was much harder to feed and cloth your kids in the past.

[@bigmike4923]

As a 22 year old Canadian guy the main thing holding me back from having kids is housing. I was raised by a single parent and lived in probably 12 different apartments/houses throughout my childhood. I just want a house but the cheapest houses within an hour from me are like half a million for old shitboxes😂

[@MARILYNANDERSON88]

Half million for a 70 year old sewer connection is a realtor- bankster scam we are all suffering from. OUTRAGEOUS.

[@somewhere6]

@allan339 There are few empty lots even near the urban areas and where there are some, the price has gone crazy.

[@bigmike4923]

@allan339 Thats the goal, I will still have to move hours away though. It will still cost around 500k still but will be way nicer than whats out there now. Ive been debating getting land and buying a trailer for a bit🤣

[@captsorghum]

This (the OP). People aren't staying childless because they lack tax incentives and token stipends. They're delaying families because it's impossible to establish a home and stable career in the way their grandparents did 50 years ago. Those without a college degree can't even afford to rent a decent place, let alone buy. And many of those with a degree are already deep in debt. And raising kids in a two-income home is not the same as it was in the 50's and 60's, when childcare was not as much of an issue. It's great to have a 9 month paternity leave, but any job that provides it probably already pays enough so that it's not really necessary. It's more of a helpful perk.

[@neznaboh]

Just wait, when population starts to collapse, housing prices will also collapse...if the rich dont buy it all.

[@DevilRaptorB]

truly the world is a funny place, first a complaint about overpopulation and now it's a complaint about population decline

[@hirokomlm131]

Both can happen at the same time. That's what people don't realize. Imagine an extreme scenario with 20 billion people on earth, but all of them are 80 years old, and none of them have children. You would technically have human overpopulation, and within 20 years, you would have human extinction.

[@jazzlover10000]

It's about control. The govt will regulate babymaking by way of something similar to a military draft where the women don't adjust their output naturally. I think occupied china will adopt mandatory pregnancies first, followed by South Korea and Japan.

[@hirokomlm131]

@@jazzlover10000 That's going to take some serious propoganda to be successful. Convincing spoiled westernized career women that their new job is to have babies won't be as easy as it was to convince housewives that they should become childless career women 50 years ago.

[@Towlie101]

​@jazzlover10000, how would the government enforce this draft?

[@asterisk911]

Yeah, that's what happens when demographics literally change.

[@ivoted-5489]

Here’s a huge problem: People used to be able to pass on their gains to their children. Now, their kids have to use every last asset to pay for long term care. It’s evil what that industry has become; overpriced death factories.

[@kimpeater1]

Why should anyone else pay to keep your parents alive? They're your parents your responsibility.

[@patrickm6012]

@@kimpeater1 of course it is the responsibility to take care of one’s parent. The OP is talking about long term care facilities, where nurses or healthcare workers are on staff. Parents could have illnesses or dementia that need professional care.

[@patrickm6012]

@@kimpeater1 correct, the cost of health care and long term care or not has skyrocketed including insurance, that is the point. Cost is an issue that needs to be addressed that is a fact.

[@kimpeater1]

@@patrickm6012 again, the cost of caring for your parents is your problem and yours alone. Your parents your responsibility. If you can't afford it you can't afford it. No one else cares!

[@patrickm6012]

@@kimpeater1 everyone is concerned about the cost of healthcare, it’s on the top 10 list of voter concerns, so yes we care. Otherwise we would not reform healthcare and insurance. This has to do with systems, corporate greed, and cost not individuals responsibility. When we see something is broken it’s time to remedy it, you don’t ignore it.

[@maclambert8841]

Nobody ever seems to talk about changing the current system. All we care about is bringing in more indentured servants into this world.

[@User53123]

Yes, the system isn't caring for the people we have. There are able bodied homeless who would like to work and live in a home. Those people are thrown away and they want us to make more. It's completely insensible.

[@sjsomething4936]

Exactly this. I believe that this video was in fact sponsored by the Club of Rome or a similar “think-tank” who simultaneously want to see higher childbirth rates and also replace as many workers as possible with AI and automation. What could possibly go wrong with such a scenario? I love that he quotes Elon muskrat, only the single most wealthy and powerful man on the planet nowadays, and one who also seems to have a tenuous grasp on reality. The entire video also assumes that global capitalism will persist indefinitely, even with those 2 aspects of technology making life for the average citizen ever more precarious and increasing the likelihood that something else develops to replace it.

[@eccentricthinker142]

Let it all fall. The population now had a chance to save themselves by changing laws, implementing innovations or having kids. They didn't and instead they enriched themselves and kicked the ladder away. 30 years ain't our problem

[@justinweatherford8129]

@@User53123I have seen both sides of the coin. I have talked to people afraid to work; because, working would endanger their government subsidies, and I have also spoken with people desperately looking for work. We need to find a system.

[@jabuki2]

I would say changing the system is discussed EVERY election. Just because it may not be the sweeping instant changes you might want doesn't mean it doesn't matter. That's the nature of compromises.

[@tonkashouse]

I've been following this topic for some time now. What I have noticed is that most people have their own favorite cause as to why this is happening. Some folks will blame costs of living, some folks will blame social media, "Me Too", female hypergamy, gaming, porn, female educational priorities, personal freedom, wanderlust, lack of religion, too much religion, etc. My own personal favorite is lack of multigenerational interaction (grandparents aren't involved). The truth is there is a Perfect Storm of environmental inputs that is preventing young people from getting together and reproducing. Everybody's pet reason is part of the problem. You're all RIGHT. The society we've created is simply not encouraging for people to even date, let alone make babies. No minor changes like increased childcare or tax benefits will do anything beyond minor bumps in birthrates. Realistically, until having children is more financially advantageous than NOT having children, we're just going to see population drop.

[@akman7826]

Couldn't agree more. We have had such an unprecedented few decades of change, and we barely know what it will lead to. Exponential technological growth, a social environment where old traditions become obselete, and lack of a new culture to allow people to thrive in this new place... I remember a quote from somewhere, something along the lines of "we were so preoccupied to know if we could, that we forgot whether we should." In the heat of passion, we have opened many Pandora's boxes over the past decades, some for the better and some for the worse, but all of which we are only beginning to feel the consequence of. Though, I am glad that at least, we are acknowledging these consequences. It may or may not be too late, but late is still better than never.

[@tonkashouse]

@@akman7826Change is happening WAY faster than evolution can deal with. It's demonstrating that we are more interested in luxury than offspring. For the majority of our existence, luxury meant actually HAVING more offspring. Now that the two aren't synonymous, we can see that luxury is what we really want. I'm very much part of the problem. I didn't have kids (for legit reasons). So I'm really hoping the species figures it out despite my own resistance to joining in on the future.

[@EnchWraitsMusic]

You seem to forget that having children is often not a decision made solely based on logic and economic thinking, but often also a very emotional decision. I guess that may be more so because I'm in an actually developed nation (the Netherlands), opposed to a nation like the USA, which is basically a third-world country with golden laqcuer. When you have an actual social safety net, it most certainly helps the people who want children (emotionally) to not be too afraid to make them.

[@tonkashouse]

@@EnchWraitsMusic Why the hostile tone? Obviously Social Safety nets are your pet reason for this issue, and they will make having children easier for those who choose to. However as your own country shows, generous social safety nets don't even increase the fertility rate above my own gilded 3rd world nation.

[@abelg9053]

It's capitalism, the root of all modern evil... all the other pet peeves are either a result of it or a bad interpretation of its evil... Unless the system is radically dismantled climate collapse and societal collapse are inevitable...

[@toerag481]

I am a gen x male and the main reason I chose to be single for my life is that I saw in the 80's how much humanity doesn't care about the environment, where money was more important than human beings and the corrupt / discriminant societal foundations that mainly pandered to the political / money elite (not n=much has changed and getting worse) etc. This is why I never wanted to bring children into a unsafe place to exist.

[@caryoutismusic4515]

I think it’s important to include increasing automation in the mix. Mechanised farming has in the last 150 years reduced the proportion of the population working in agriculture from almost 50% to around 2%

[@markbernier8434]

Three generations ago children were free labour and a retirement plan when you lived on a farm. Now they are very expensive pets.

[@pampence96]

Yes and with AI in our midst, what are all these extra 80 million people a year going to do for a living?

[@heuzame6198]

@pampence96 AI/automation will not destroy more jobs than it creates.

[@Alderoth]

@heuzame6198 No, but for those of us without the education to work alongside these machines (programming, assembling, repairing, etc) I think we're in trouble.

[@heuzame6198]

@@Alderoth There should kickstart programs so they can adjust in time

[@niteshbhargav8625]

In India, during my father's education period. Students per class was 20 and 1 teacher per class. It turned into 40 by the time i entered the education system and by the time i graduated, we were 80-100/class per teacher. Reasons being lack of incentives to be teachers and compitation in the society to be well paid. Resources like food and shelter is no longer enough. Quality of life takes precedent now more then ever in history. Declining population might be the solution. Nature will take it's course.

[@carolinareaper8089]

Its a problem of overpolulqtion in india but other counties around are almost ending due to lack of young people and no children , like China , Japan, even Eastern European countries like Poland …. This are ageing populations that will disappear soon … so it’s a matter of relocation. Besides - why India, being such poor country and many people not afford shelter, food or school for children any people have more and more children?

[@tadinada9607]

It is better to be overpopulated than under populated in long term....once replacement rate is low it is very difficult to recover

[@martins3885]

Not might but the only option for certain overpopulated countries is degrowth.

[@martins3885]

​@@carolinareaper8089also no relocations will happen because we are not responsible for your unstable population growth.

[@AjayTiwari-en9nz]

​@@carolinareaper8089Population and fertility rate are driven by socio economic factors. India needs a growing population to grow the economy fuelled by domestic demand until we become a high income country. As of 2020, Indian TFR also reached 2.0 which is below the replacement level fertility rate. On top of that the sex ratio in India is one of the worst in the world, which essentially means our population will start declining soon. By 2050 India's population will also start to fall. Unfortunately, India being a poor country will not have the luxury of attracting migrants to sustain the economy.

[@dominiclloyd6651]

'We're living in a golden age of mental health'. I don't think I've heard anything so at odds with reality. We are actually living in a well documented mental health crisis of epidemic proportions.

[@jillybe1873]

Especially our leaders in the west either have dementia or are raving psychopaths

[@JonesWalker-z7s]

Mental health is such bullshit. The shrinks are usually more "cuckoo" than the patients.

[@metacortexvortex2131]

Yeah I just heard that depression rates are up a whopping 50% since like 10 years ago.

[@blackgoldwing1]

Hope this is classy - your part of the psyop lol 😂

[@blackgoldwing1]

Agreeing with you Dominic my post is for what? Producer We are entering in a time where Plague and war is going to reduce the population. This is a planned event by elites : )

[@lordcron]

The internet has shined a light on who we really are and we've found that we don't like each other nor do we have to deal with each other anymore... When you don't have to deal with the crap of the opposite sex you won't! It's that simple!

[@PricelessBinkey1337]

You found out that most people are crazy as f***. And most of the time they have blue hair and call themselves feminists.

[@victrolaman2007]

A am struck by the concept that our "economic model" that drives our society, and will fail due to population collapse, is totally a man made system, there are no laws of physics at play here. The question then, for me, is should we be encouraging people to have more kids to sustain our made up "system" or should we adopt another system that provides the societal benefits regardless of population demographic trends? I don't know the answer, but I would like to see the experts tackle that question.

[@LadyCoyKoi]

The answer is really simple... resource-based economy. It is slapping our leaders f^

[@lesleybowers9634]

I agree with you. A youtube channel called The Venus Project may be interesting to you. Talks about a Resource Based economy.

[@paulas_lens]

​@ziplokk1453bidet, man, come on! ;)

[@eljanrimsa5843]

@ziplokk1453 I think we can still support a lot of people, just not 8 billion, if we switch to garden-based agriculture. And it will be sustainable.

[@chrisb1805]

I have been saying the economic model needs to change for a couple of decades. We have been living in a kind of pyramid scheme that will collapse. I am somewhat sure we will figure it out but there will be some turmoil in between.

[@davidlarom8810]

Ricky, I believe you beautifully elucidated the problem, but have its solution dead wrong. I am a retired environmental science professor. For 11 years I taught the "demographic transition" in many of my SDSU classes. We have discovered that our societal institutions are nothing less than a growth Ponzi scheme. The solution can't possibly be to feed more customers into the scheme. Human well-being must not depend on a continual supply of more humans. In the long run, the Earth's population cannot increase indefinitely, and I strongly believe it needs to decrease. How can we do this without catastrophic societal consequences? Perhaps technology can be part of the answer. Perhaps pro-natal policies can slow the crash and give us more time to institute appropriate policies. But as a child of parents who endured the great depression, I can't help but feel that tightening the belt, learning some restraint, and valuing quality of life over quantity of life will be the biggest part of the solution. In the long run I would favor a planet earth with FAR fewer humans on it, each living FAR better lives. Let's continue to honor women -- both their motherhood and their choice not to be mothers. Let's devalue social media and re-prioritize real world social life. But above all let's work together in the real world to create a healthy culture that can weather difficult times. "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell" - Edward Abbey

[@mistress.villaina7591]

👏🏽

[@iFrostNight]

Exactly right. I see this being a struggle for my generation and the generations following me, but eventually a new equilibrium will be found. This is a period of de-growth, and all of these calls to have more children are short-sighted. We have overshot carrying capacity, even if it doesn’t look the same as other populations doing the same.

[@Loveandotherchaos1438]

Underrated comment! I want kids but not if I expect they’ll suffer most of their life!!!

[@angelinimartini]

Perfect. Loved your response. I work in the oil field(actually out in the field) and I see the devastation we cause for this insatiable need for consumption. Right now, I work in Texas close to the New Mexico border and we are drilling drilling drilling. I have been out on this site since around June. When I first got to this site, not much was going on around me. There were gas flares off on one side of me that I could spot but on the other side, pretty much open land. Now I spot 6 rigs about to start drilling near me. When I got here, we were pretty much overrun with scorpion, tarantulas, gold millipedes and we could also see coyotes and rabbits everyday. Now, there aren’t so many of them. We have seen a lot of birds die since we have been here and I can’t help but think it’s the toxic sludge water that is just sitting yards away from me or the salt water that pools inside our containments after a rain. None of this is good. We can’t just keep making more and more oil pad sites and fragmenting all these living things. We are killing them and killing the environment. Then when I hear about this talk of “renewable energy” I’m just thinking, you’re going from one resource to the next, and we are just going to pillage and burn everything. Renewables are not clean. The way we mine these resources is far from sustainable or clean and we don’t even have the proper methods in place to not just throw away lithium and cobalt and other elements that took a lot of energy to mine. We don’t have proper recycling in place to add new life to these “renewables”and we are just in this endless cycle. Every “clean” energy source is not without devastating problems. We cannot sustain this population like this much less a bigger one. People are ignorant to the problem when they think population growth is the big issue.

[@tikaltoki4561]

Well put.

[@Havox7]

It's really hard to care about this when you mention how many young people it takes to support one old person. We young people have had the rug pulled from beneath our feet. Human productivity keeps rising as wages have stagnated since the 70's, inflation keeps rising and pay doesn't keep up, corporations use every exploit they can to dodge taxes, CEO to average employee salary keeps diverging. It seems the world is going to have to burn before these things get fixes. Especially in the Unites States.

[@AilisonCarvalho]

And you can't buy a house because the old folks had 5kids, they haven't died yet and there's nowhere thise 5 kids, woth families now, can live. His proposal is total BS, don't believe this maniac, he only wants his investments to keep on booming so he exploit you to pay more rent on the houses he owns. 😂 This guy is ploting with Elon Musk, that can't be any good, the Millionaire that hypes up non existent currency just to make extra cash is trying to do the same but woth the population. 🤷

[@kwren-od3si]

Reminder...the old people invented every toy and accessory that young folks can't live without, and most of the old people are actually feeding and housing their kids or grandkids

[@Havox7]

@@kwren-od3si and the old people of your time invented every toy and accessory you couldn't live without. What's your point. Old people are still feeding and sheltering their kids because they've also lived through that same stagnation. It's been stagnant since the 70s. Most young people can't afford to move out even if they wanted to. Rent is ridiculous, housing prices are insane. Let's not even add the need for a college degree since that was shoved down our throats. So now even jobs that shouldn't need it you do since every other applicant will have one.

[@kwren-od3si]

@@Havox7 the younger generation are mostly crybabies. I moved out on my own at age 17, In 1970. I left a 3room 400 sqft hovel with a $13 guitar and the clothes on back. Spent years being homeless before it was fashionable. Gave up fun for an education, and i worked usually one full time and one part time job totalling 60+ hrs per week until 1987. After a medical event I cut back to 40 hrs week until my heart developed a life threatening condition. At age 43 I had a part of my heart removed. At age 55 I had two surgeries for malignant melanoma, followed by brain infection of unknown cause, intestinal obstruction, and all the horrors of fibromyalgia. Point being..my life has not been easy, and nobody sent me off with an inheritance. I didn't think anyone owed me anything. Along with partners of the time, I have bought two homes and in this twilight of my life I have bought a home alone, on the country. I never fell for the latest cars or the fancy vacations and I never had children. If I can earn my own damn college degree without spending the time partying...of I can earn my own down payment without first buying a fancy new car (btw, I only had one new car in my life, and that was a dodge Aries) then the rest of you can stop buying the latest car, cell, computer, giant tv, ATV toy, boat, skis, and save for yourself. So far I have not met a gen x who wouldn't rather party til he puked and blame everyone else for it in the morning hangover in mom and dad's basement.

[@earnthis1]

Yep, this is a stupid topic to promote, considering it is pure speculation and there are so many REAL problems, like you mentioned

[@Kisaragi_desu]

The housing is unaffordable everywhere. The public transportation is overwhelmed all thr time. People are competing for a position with 1000s of others. If anything we are experiencing overpopulation right now and NEED a population collapse.

[@lba7362]

I don't think you quite realise what you're talking about. A population collapse would cause a total collapse of economic and social systems, leading to something akin to the Russian civil war, but on a global scale.

[@Kisaragi_desu]

@@lba7362 it wouldn't if you reduce pension payments .

[@theone7059]

@JustinWilliams-ed2ug how do you go through the entire video (i assume you didn't) yet still insist we are dealing with an overpopulation issue.

[@indranilbanik3424]

@@theone7059 Quite simple: just look at the state of the environment. Economic problems can be handled by appropriate transfers of resources, but the planet is still finite at the end of the day. We definitely need a managed decline in population to perhaps half the current level by the end of this century. Not unlimited population growth just to preserve an obviously flawed economic model.

[@theone7059]

@@indranilbanik3424 @indranilbanik3424 you're absolutely right about that and i see the point you're trying to make. We humans use 1.6 times or something of the resources that Earth can provide us within the year and that can lead to various disasters in itself. The population collapse will happen, it's a guarantee so any more political population controls will only lead to more disaster to future generations as if they couldn't be more fucked already. Realistically nothing will change until it's too late because it makes no sense to create laws trying to conserve Earth when a foreign competitor isn't bound to these laws. Food for example in a country like Slovenia which has a population of a little more than 2 million has disposed of about 2 tons of food in a year. Imagine this statistic in US which has a massive population number. And you can find the wasting of resources in other aspects just like food if you want to look them up.

[@The4Tifier]

I used to work full-time at a factory to make $600 CAD a week after taxes. That’s $2400 a month. A boomer would think that’s amazing, but they forget that inflation exists. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment in my area is $1500 a month. A car is also required to get to work since the factory is in the middle of nowhere, so that’s an extra $500 a month for insurance, gas, and maintenance for a used Corolla. Utilities take up $200-300 no problem. So that leaves… $100-200 a month for food, other bills, and savings… So working full-time, busting my ass at a factory and destroying my body in the process, made me working poor and forced me to rely on food stamps…?! No freaking way I’m going to afford a family or risk getting anyone pregnant when I can’t even afford to take care of myself!

[@luxuryvagrant6496]

Bruv, I feel for you. If you are still in this month-to-month situation (I have briefly lived that cycle but quickly broke it) I am curious to ask : Why not go all-in on fishing, forestry, mining or even the militray to save up hardcore for a few years?

[@The4Tifier]

@@luxuryvagrant6496 My answer to this is that sadly, I'm not the only one in this situation, and a lot are even worse off. I've applied before to places such as a mining site in New Brunswick that needed workers, and work for places that were desperately hiring like long term care homes and elderly care. Despite how my resume was approved and hand crafted by government entities, these places never got back to me. Now I'm working a job I enjoy much more, am very good at, is in demand in my area, work less in it, and get paid $22 an hour! I'm a freelance videographer! But sadly, the world isn't the same as it was in the past where getting a middle-class lifestyle where you can support a family of 4 off your income alone was something you only needed a high school degree for.

[@FrogsofAristophones]

There's indicators that married couples tend to make more, especially married men. If you team up with someone you're more vulnerable in some ways, and less so in others. Even if it just comes down to getting a male roommate, you can find a way forward brother.

[@luxuryvagrant6496]

@@FrogsofAristophones Preach. Now I must ads that married or not, woman or not; uniting with someone is a superpower ON THE CONDITION THAT THEY ARE RELIABLE!! If the person is not gonna synergise with you economically, logistically.. you're better off alone. Someone with common goals. Good luck, man.

[@jazzlover10000]

If you had invested it, you'd be up in the millions now.

[@liborrajm2916]

I am from Czechia, so part of EU. Our replacement rate has already been below 2.1 for some time. We only grow in population thanks to immigration but that has its own set of problems when not handled sensibly and carefully (which I am afraid it rarely is). Millennials and certainly Gen Z are now basically openly being told to save some (significant) money for retirement rather than hope for dignified pension from government. Many people here are giving up having kids because of the high cost of raising them. I kind of wish I could fast forward 30-40years just so I could see how all of these present time issues developed and where we all ended up at.

[@nadahere]

Ahoj Libore 😀

[@nadahere]

Please don't call the country Czechia. 🙁

[@liberoAquila]

Being occupied by EU destroys countries.

[@earlysda]

Jesus will probably return before that happens.

[@wokeaf1337]

@@earlysda why would he, he deserves his peace.

[@dshepherd107]

I’d riot too. It’s not “just 2 years.” By the time you reach your 60s, you’re tired, your body can’t do what it used to, & you’re much more likely to get a debilitating chronic disease or illness. So, there’s not much time left to enjoy the “golden years.” It’s more like, give the majority of your life to work, and then you can’t do all the things you’d dreamed about.. & then, you’re dead.

[@dshepherd107]

@@googleuser868 Facts!

[@Benzknees]

Retirement is a modern luxury that never existed in the past, and will have to disappear in future. And whilst doing hard manual work may not be practical for the elderly, there's plenty of white collar jobs that they can still do. And it will help counter the mental & physical decline.

[@blueoval250]

@@googleuser868I’m a debt free millennial but I didn’t fall for the bs that is college.

[@KatariaGujjar]

​@@blueoval250 You're an outlier. There's more folk who didn't go to college and permanently indebted.

[@blueoval250]

@@KatariaGujjar permanent debt is the American way. I chose not start out in life with massive debt. The majority of college degrees aren’t worth the ink it takes to print them. Yesterday I heard a woman working at a restaurant talking about how much she regretted going but the worst is a guy working at 7-11 saying he had a masters degree. I feel bad for these people that got scammed and it’s only getting worse.

[@Speedj2]

it may sound silly, but i learned a lot about how population crashes can be unintuitive and sneak up on you from a town building game called "banished". because life expectancy is far longer than child bearing age, its easy to miss the signs when it matters. before you know it, you dont have enough kids coming of age to replace workers and then you dont have enough of a workforce to support the existing population, and as the elderly suddenly start to rapidly die off and the existing workforce is retiring without leaving kids to take their places (because you didnt give them the opportunities they needed), suddenly your food supply and other critical resource supplies to keep people alive start to collapse and people start to die off en masse for reasons other than old age. and then, without extremely quick thinking and rapid changes to your economy, the newest adults find themselves in no position to be raising kids either so they dont and before you know it, they are also too old and thats game over. I've also seen population spikes from uncontrolled immigration cause the same thing. I wish i could say, well thats just a game, its not realistic, but looking at the real world, although the systems may be a lot more complex, in the grand scheme of things, i'm seeing the same trends. if it takes an entire generation to fix our economy so that young adults can be comfortable raising families again, then that gap in the supply chain will start to snowball as that generation's small number of children starts to become our critical workforce. and without extremely rapid corrections to adjust our economy to support more people with a smaller workforce, which is frankly just completely unrealistic with the way things are currently run, we can expect even countries like the US to be suffering mass starvation and chaos due to collapsing supply chains within a couple generations. but the CEO's that currently rule this country dont care. they only care about maximizing their profits now, with no regards for anyone's future, and most of our workforce continues to work month to month or even week to week, without the breathing room to plan ahead or think about their future.

[@rainanoelle]

Too bad this game isn’t being promoted so that everyone played it. I really think people don’t understand the scale of the problem in the tiniest bit. Honestly I feel like our only hope is AI and the advancement of robotics…they won’t be taking jobs from people, companies will be trying to crank them out fast enough so that they can take care of an aging population. Maybe the people who don’t agree with all this will get lucky when they hit retirement, and the government will provide each elderly person with one personal care bot when they hit 70, as a replacement for the social security system that is defunct by that point. It could definitely be a whole lot worse than that…

[@traderjoss]

Workforce?? Dear, the workforce has been depleting for years while the population has GROWN. The chain stores used to have 12 people working the floors and the cash registers... now they have one person working the floor and have robots as cash registers. What do you think happened to the 11 other people? And what do you think is going to happen to that 12th one once AI comes along? This isn't 1970. Having more children is not going to create a larger workforce.

[@Speedj2]

@@traderjoss when i say workforce here, I'm not referring to actually employed people, I'm referring to working age people or people who have the ability to work. and lower availability of certain types of jobs is only a tiny part of the problem. the much, much bigger problem is the jobs that are left are widely not paying people a living wage anymore. and we as a society are not supporting our unemployed and underemployed workforce well enough to keep the overall workforce flexible as the job markets shift and change. and as the workforce is not finding themselves in suitable conditions to have a family, more and more they are opting out. and this isnt about population _decline_, minor trends up or down in the population arent really cause for concern. what we're talking about here is a full on population _crash_. which is where the "workforce" population very suddenly starts to fall below the minimum required to keep the economy, or even critical infrastructure, running (what i refer to as "critical workforce"). I'm talking about (as is the video) a situation where it wont even matter how much pay is offered for these jobs, there simply wont be anyone to take them, maybe not even ai. and if the crash is bad enough it can cause the supply chain to fail, and thats where things start to go from dystopian (kinda where we already are now) to apocalyptic. the main focus of my comment above, though, was to reinforce the topic of the video, which is about how these crashes can really sneak up on you because the indicators for an impending crash are not intuitive, largely due to a delayed effect where the conditions that lead to the crash can be set up 3 or even 4 generations before it, so it happens on a timescale that can be difficult to fully comprehend if you're not studying trends over much larger time periods than most people think about. in other words, if we dont make some very rapid changes now (and honestly, AI is one of the things that might ultimately be helping us to do that) then we may have already missed the boat to prevent a full collapse scenario.

[@traderjoss]

@JustinWilliams-ed2ug It doesn't matter if a machine can't do certain jobs. What determines salary in a market is how few people in the population are ABLE & WILLING to do the job. Even though a machine can't scoop ice-cream, The fact that literally any human being is able to scoop means the job will pay the lowest possible amount because the employer has so many potential workers to choose from. Or will even make it an "internship" where they don't have to pay anything at all. If the population were to suddenly be cut in half then you wouldn't have as many ice cream scoopers to choose from... this will mean you'll have to pay more of a living wage to get the workers you want since you want. The secret is you need less people so that there's less competition for jobs.

[@KenHiroshi627]

Banished bump! I always hated when my populations would plummet, recovery was beyond difficult

[@dalskiBo]

Finally a video on this, thanks. I was born in the 80s & have already noticed a terrible decline in quality of life. Unfit apartments, anti-social miserable living conditions, stagnant wages & exploitation. Absurd travelling cinsitions & an unfit road network (won't mention train network as it's dire). An increasing obsession with qualifications limiting job options for most, restricting better talent from entering due to a lack of qualifications.

[@christerry1773]

I was born in the 80’s and have encountered the exact opposite.

[@deadwingdomain]

​@@christerry1773 that's called privilege

[@deadwingdomain]

I thought this was going somewhere. But it's just a list...

[@thec9424]

Your list is all the negative ramifications of overpopulation.

[@dalskiBo]

@@thec9424 Correct

[@danielfaben5838]

Could it be that on an intuitive level younger folks of childbearing years have a knowledge that things are not going to turn out well for themselves and there progeny? Many people might say that they don't want to bring children into such a world: a world where emotional depression, fear, social stratification and isolation, war, environmental degradation and shortages seem like certainties.

[@rainkloud]

I think you're on to something there. Maybe they don't KNOW it's not going to turn out well, but are unsure if it will and like in horror movies it's the tension and not knowing what's coming that really stresses you out and that sustained level of of heightened fear takes a toll on people and puts them into a perpetual fight or flight mode which is not conducive towards having a family. Another part is the unprecedented levels of information/communication we're subjected to. The average millennial/genz is inundated with social media, youtube recommendations, mobile phone apps, discord and so on. It places enormous burdens on still developing minds as there are literally distractions everywhere they turn to. It's also created challenges in dating. People follow the top instagram influencers and see how beautiful and rich their lives look and then the average person can't measure up to that so they don't even bother with dating. Another is FOMO, people have a hard time settling on one person since there's such easy access to dating markets. No one wants to get stuck with a potato so they hop from one person to the next never able to feel satisfied.

[@isaza5716]

This is my reason to not have kids at least.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

"Many people might say that they don't want to bring children into such a world" Some say that. They might even mean it. But they want sex and drugs.

[@MrAsteba]

It is simply crazy expensive nowadays. Having a kid means needing one more room, and many people simply can't afford it. This is also why I am very skeptical of projections predicting that the population will crash. I think once the population starts dropping, real estate will become more affordable, so people should start having more kids again.

[@paulwilson2651]

I'm one. Withholding having children is the best way for working class people to force a better distribution of wealth.

[@stellasdoesstuff]

Whenever I see discussions about over/underpopulation, I remember the rodent utopia experiment: rodents were provided with as many resources and as much fun as they would want, and they had a BLAST. Their population boomed because they were able to thrive! However, it eventually plateaued, and then dropped. They had as many resources as they would want, but they weren't reproducing as quickly. Okay, cool, but there will be a lower plateau too, right? Wrong. When rodent populations got low, they didn't start reproducing a bunch again. It was almost like they lost the motivation to have/raise babies, or perhaps lost the knowledge of how to do it. Since I heard of this experiment, I have always wondered if this is the direction humanity is going.

[@TheDabus1]

Sadly this is where we are going in the long term I think

[@bobsontheepic42]

Also, might not be rated but there is a MIT experiment that predicts mass death by 2040. The main difference between experiment and people is that there was always somebody that takes care of the mice regardless how bad it gets. Once we lose our safety nets we going to be in big trouble.

[@MeMe-zq7qd]

That’s interesting. I also wonder if this is the human version of the rat experiment

[@Apjooz]

What was the experiment even trying to prove, that rats will overpopulate and go insane in a closed environment? Well, proven I guess.

[@vee6961]

Interesting indeed. I think the thing is that every single species plus the planet as a whole exept for humans themselves will profit from human population declining massively.

[@chioxin]

I don't agree with tax credits that will encourage families to continue the "two income family" issue. I'd rather help but also encourage a one parent income. I don't care who stays home, woman or man... I just think there's value in encouraging one parent to stay home to tend the home and the children. To share and pass values, create and maintain their family traditions. To have fun... with their children. We need to get away from this two income family problem ... what's the point of more children, if you're to tired to pass on your values and traditions?

[@stefanielozinski]

This. I am so sick of all of these 'incentives'. Here in Canada they're pushing 'free' or 'ten dollar a day' daycare. Okay, great. I'm home raising my kids. So it's yet another thing my comparatively high-earning husband (who in reality is struggling because he's supporting a whole family) gets to pay for while I get treated like an unemployed drain on the system, as though me raising kids means nothing unless they belong to someone else.

[@kolbyking2315]

Incomes would need to increase by 55% to comfortably support a "one income family" system ($79k vs. $51k for 1 kid).

[@searchingfortruth619]

Yes!!!! I love love love this comment.

[@chioxin]

​@@kolbyking2315 You aren't wrong, and at the same time that would not solve the problem. All that would do is reinforce the two income family model. I don't honestly know the solution to this thing I think is a problem. We're human though, and humans will min max what they feel is important, and unfortunately that's material things right now.

[@indranilbanik3424]

@@stefanielozinski This is exactly what I was saying to a friend recently. The two income model is fatally flawed, because who will take care of the child? They can pay someone else, but that will likely just absorb the income of one of the two parents. We need to make it possible to have a model where one parent works and the other stays at home. If this is not affordable, then the couple is very unlikely to reach the replacement level. In my opinion, the easiest way to handle this is to classify a parent staying at home as a kind of government job with a government salary and pension. It makes no sense that a woman (in your case) should stay at home and be treated like society as a net drain on the system, which has to be paid for through your own savings or fiscal transfers from someone else. As if you decided to go on holiday and have to pay for it yourself. I think some people and especially MGTOW men like me might be a little concerned with the taxes needed to pay for such a policy, but ultimately the main problem would be with older people, who are making up more and more of the population and voting power. It is already way too late for such a policy to pass in Parliament because of this reason.

[@kornydad14]

I have 3 kids and only one of my kids wants to have kids and only one. Why? They all said it is just too expensive and they don't think they could afford to have kids. There is the problem, right from the horses mouth. Life is just to expensive.

[@SilkSonic-c9z]

So why tf u or ur grandparents had more children? Ohh I get it u were fking around in ur youth and could give 2 shhits about next generations...

[@liopleurodon155]

Ask them how many kids they would have if we hypothetically made having kids free tomorrow. The answer usually tells you what is really going on.

[@michaelrhodes73]

@@liopleurodon155 It would still be zero. Cost is the excuse. It is the responsibility they do not want. Western culture hates adulthood.

[@nicke0b]

In some countries the government throw money at families to have more kids .... and it doesn't help. It is mostly a cultural issue

[@ZeroN1neZero]

i love watching society collapse under the weight of greed and short term profit that could easily be used to fund infrastructure etc and keep the country going for years on end rather than causing people to get desperate and violent.

[@churblefurbles]

Its collapsing under "progress". Barbarians at the gate are invited in, while the very smug adopt cats.

[@scarling9367]

@@churblefurbles Looks like I've got to start looking for cats.

[@robertd9850]

Fund what infrastructure, for what purpose? Pursuit of financial success is not greed, it is just the pursuit of financial success. "Greed" can't be successfully and persuasively defined anyway.

[@ZeroN1neZero]

@@robertd9850 well, the definition of infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. The definition of greed is intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food. Since my sarcasm didn’t translate well, I went and looked up these very simple definitions for you so you can better understand why your opinion is both stupid and wrong. Corporations are literally polluting the world at unprecedented levels for s h o r t t e r m p r o f i t because they are g r e e d y. This clearly upset you enough to comment because you must also be a greedy person who feels like money is worth more than a functioning society that you can actually spend the money in🙃hope this helps, babe💖

[@robertd9850]

@@ZeroN1neZero Well, honey, it doesn't because that was mostly just ignorant drivel. Everyone is "greedy" but you still haven't defined it? What is too "intense?" What is "selfish?" Opinions can be neither stupid nor wrong, Bozo. They're opinions. And a society, btw, cannot function without a medium of exchange, i.e. money. Go back to your gender studies now since you are clueless about the economy and how it functions.

[@jonesreviews4613]

I am 24 years old, the beginning of Gen z. I seriously do not see myself retiring. I will die at the job. It will take a miracle for me to have a child. Only one of my friends has a child and is struggling to feed his child with two incomes in the house even after working well over 50 hours a week and family support for child care. I don't know how he'll afford education when he can't even afford a house. A lot of people my age don't see a point in working for a future generation because they see it as throwing their lives away so their children can struggle as well. My financial goals are traveling and being able to afford a truck, i don't know a single person my age with any hope of having children or owning a home.

[@oswaldmosley5012]

Feminism has been a disaster. Letting women work and letting women vote will inevitably cause catastrophic population decline. The only surviving cultures will be those that put their women back in the kitchen, where they belong. Just have kids. If you stress about having enough money, or waiting for the right time, it'll never happen. Just pop them out and figure it out. That's the only way families will function right now because boomers have ruined our prospects so severely that we can't rely on any stability for the foreseeable future.

[@agme8045]

Literally why would anyone have a kid at 24 yo!! lol that’s way too young. If I were you, I’d be surprised that one of my friends had a kid, and everyone would assume it was an “accident”, because again, who the heck chooses to have kids that young.

[@laumay7364]

@@agme8045 that’s funny cause the red pill men consider a woman at 25 as “hitting the wall” 😂

[@laner.845]

@@agme8045 before the turn of the century, many families did have their first kid by 24. My own classmates were popping out babies shortly after high school because that's what rural, poor Texans did, we reproduced and worked at the Piggly Wiggly if we weren't lucky enough to afford college. Someone's gotta populate that shithole of a town. And the lucky ones, like me, we either got scholarships or sold our souls to the student loan companies (over 20yr later I'm still paying them off, but only 4k left). The latter were too broke to have kids, and the former usually met their spouse in college and had kids as soon as they got their first jobs mid 20s. Looking back much further, traditionally, families were having babies by 17-18 because they were going to need like ten tries to keep three kids alive and it takes about a year to gestate and birth and prepare enough for the next one to hopefully be healthy. Five to six births by the early 30s was not unheard of. Mother mortality was the biggest threat to large families, because pregnancy and birth is freaking dangerous, even today, but especially before modern medicine. And speaking of mother's mortality rate, the US has the HIGHEST DEATH RATE of mothers during pregnancy and childbirth than ANY OTHER FIRST WORLD COUNTRY. Of course modern women aren't clamoring to pop one out. Google it if you don't believe me. I can cite a dozen reputable sources that back this up, including my own family doctor, who mentioned this to my wife. Suffice to say, we aren't having kids.

[@Commonsenseisnotcommon8]

24 is a good age to start having kids especially if you will not have two or three kids your facility drops after 30, he even said it in the video. Plus you don’t wanna have super old parents. And mostly human history. People were having kids at 24. It’s the reason we’re having a population decline. Did you even watch the video?

[@lancelowery4027]

My daughter is 31 and has no children. She has a lot of friends and only one of them of the same age has a child. The world around younger people has them questioning having kids at all. If Governments and corporations want workers for the future they better start paying the ones in the present.

[@purplepotato8849]

I am your daughter's age, and in my friend group only one high earning couple has a child. When the economy is not going well, people can only make sensible adjustments; things can only change when the situation improves, and no amount of government shaming or small incentive can change this unfortunately. Hopefully subsequent generations with smaller workforces are better compensated. Things do feel rather hopeless at the moment.

[@lancelowery4027]

@@purplepotato8849 Sorry. Hopefully things get better. Worry about my daughter and young peoples future all the time.

[@davidingram1016]

Maybe part of the problem( the biggest part , in my opinion ) is that the government does not produce anything but creates problems for us by taking our money , adding tax after tax and giving it freely to other countries or illegals or ppl who absolutely won’t work but could ( in other words, no t disabled) Too many are not doing their part, not caring than other ppl are supprtin😮g them, cheating the “ system” !

[@romanr.301]

The difference is so stark across generations. My paternal grandparents had 13 children. My parents had 4 children. I have doubts that any of the 4 of us will have children, and if any of us do, probably 2 at the absolute maximum.

[@LuXifR]

I think ultimately it's down to people not being able to afford having children like they used to. And looking at the development of the distribution of wealth, it's very easy to see why and what needs to be done about this.

[@brianhirt5027]

I ain't no fan of the rich fat cats either. But it's pointless to blame them. This is a social problem even they couldn't create, nor do they want, and damn sure can't do much about. As the cost of specialist labor continues to climb, it'll outpace even their deep pockets within thirty years. Right now they're deeply funding this robotics & AI development, but I believe that'll plateau out at some point when they realize that robots can never fully replace humans in the workforce for a multitude of reasons. All of which reduce to robots ain't people.

[@Dan-nj8du]

@@brianhirt5027 It's not blaming the wealthy. It's blaming the policies that reward the wealthy at the cost of the working class.

[@FirstLast-vr7es]

It's not about blame. It's about identifying and correcting a problem. Wealth for working class citizens is falling, while wealth for upper class people is rapidly rising. It started in force in 1972 and hasn't stopped since. Couple that with tax policy that rewards the wealthy. Working class couples MUST work two full-time jobs just to pay the bills, making raising children properly nigh-on impossible. Probably not a stretch to correlate that with our mental health and mass-shootings crises as well. We have to fix this, because society is currently in decay because of it. @@brianhirt5027

[@ilovestitch]

When I was a teenager in the 90s I swore I would never have kids unless I could raise them in a home where they had all the opporunity I never had... I'm doing well for myself by today's standards....and that is still far below my 90s quality of life when we went to theme parks every summer, vacations twice a year etc...Making twice as much as both my parents combined and I can't even afford those basics.

[@AwfulnewsFM]

@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 kids are cheap if you let them die like they used to. Humanely raising a kid ain't cheap. Then again maybe you have different definition of humane as I am sure our ancestors did. Then again you can also force women to have children by putting that in the law, as long as you are willing to compromise on morality it's not really a problem.

[@Texas240]

My childhood (in the US, 40 years ago) was pretty f'd up. As a child, I promised myself I wouldn't have kids if I couldn't guarantee them a stable family environment. I kept that promise.

[@ericsonhazeltine5064]

Thanks

[@CM_7]

Same decision, same outcome.

[@Faraz-cse]

So you gave your child that life or just didn't have one ?

[@JackTheRabbitMusic]

I made that promise, too, but I’m still a rabbit 💪😏👍🏼

[@mylesgray3470]

I’m the same age as you and I had a similar bad childhood and swore off having kids from a young age. My brother and I were such a burden to my single father who raised us and we rarely had enough food. I never changed my mind about having kids as life has gotten harder and harder financially in the US.

[@YannMetalhead]

I believe the explanation is simple: life today is insanely expensive and the future isn't looking good. Who would have a kid in this scenario?

[@melissamoore6539]

Bingo

[@mikelundrigan2285]

Hope you’re right! Less of us is the start of the solution!!

[@cavalieroutdoors6036]

​@@mikelundrigan2285you can start by 'solving' yourself.

[@knrdvmmlbkkn]

"Who would have a kid in this scenary?" No, "scenery". I would. Most people would, presumably. There's apparently no way to have a decent life without it.

[@earlysda]

Stop destroying kids in the womb - problem half solved.

[@deborahhebblethwaite1865]

I am a 71-year-old woman living in Canada. That makes me a boomer. There are a lot of us, particularly in the first world countries. Most of my friends have at most two children. Some one and a few three. So the big problem here in Canada is that we have a very old population. When I was born I believe the average age was in the 20s and now is in the high 40s so we are not keeping up, and therefore have a lot of immigrants. as long as we are not overwhelmed like we seem to be at the moment with refugees and can manage the flow of people coming into the country. It’s a good thing. Because there are a lot of cramped countries at the moment and with the earth getting warmer, maybe people need to disperse over the Earth a little bit better. And as far as population growth well and I was born, there were 2 billion people and that is plenty. There may be a little bit of a slight shift, especially with consumerism. However, we shall endure, and the planet will be much happier and healthier with less people. and that will be me checking out in the near future I guess. I have no complaints. I’ve had a great life.🇨🇦🙏

[@SonnyBubba]

I believe Peter Zeihan said it best: “when people were living on farms, children were free labor, so you had as many as you wanted plus one (which is how you found out you had enough). “But when people moved into urban condos, children became very loud very messy very expensive furniture, so adults have fewer of them.”

[@janreznak881]

Except chosenites like him.

[@makeitcount2985]

No one should have kids to exploit them

[@zpetar]

Peter Zeihan is one of these children too. Very loud, very messy, ZERO contribution to humanity.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

@@makeitcount2985 "No one should have kids to exploit them" Why?

[@ruthbobo218]

The population talking points are ALL a lie. The population growth is healthy. Governments are promoting this BS to secure a poverty class of people, thats ALL!!

[@hatchermoney]

You are correct on why families are decreasing in size. Living in Asia, I hear first-hand from Koreans and Japanese friends about how expensive it has become to have even one child, let alone two. Three kids is totally out of the question for most families - shrinking housing isn't helping either - it's hard to fit three kids inside a 900 sq ft apartment.

[@zephead843]

Japan is past the point of no return. I watch NHK news channel quite a lot, and it seems that all they talk about is their population decline. The government is slowly but surely going broke.They will have to make some tough decisions very soon. (It's a shame to see all those gorgeous Japanese women childless. I would gladly volunteer to help repopulate their country.)

[@jeremystonell690]

Absurd. It's not hard, it's 'socially unacceptable'. There's a difference. If you look at what society did in the past most houses were two rooms. One room was a kitchen, the other a dining room and everyone slept in the dining room on cold days and on the porch on hot days. If you don't believe me, go visit ye olde 1900's housing. I'm sure there will be a historic housing museum near you somewhere. There are some families living in caravans too with six children in the US. Two caravans, 8 people. It also promotes good behaviour because nothing pushes people to cooperate more than being forced to live with them for 365 days a year and sleep only 1m away from them.

[@jeremystonell690]

@JustinWilliams-ed2ug de la Motte family. I also know several other families near me that live similarly. Not caravan but 5+ and earn less than me.

[@raez7155]

It's more a social issue than cost per se. With the increase in living standards these cultures have become very materialistic. Appearances matter a lot and women are expected to keep working while raising infants, and keep those infants looking cute at all times. Lots of people raise multiple kids in small spaces in other countries. They depend on extended families to help with childcare, and they share used baby clothing and gear with their friends and relatives. That's how you get the costs down and the enjoyment higher.

[@pmb6667]

@@raez7155 More women are also just damn tired of the *drudgery* of motherhood and the *disrespect they get from it,* while also expected to do everything else and be a model sexpot too. Heck, the leading cause of death of pregnant women *in the U.S.* is *HOMICIDE (by their own husbands/boyfriends)*. I don't blame them for not wanting ANY any of that anymore.

[@DLAJC]

This actually answers the question I always had. Most people I know personally and online have no interest in having children. Some of them doesn’t even want to commit in a marriage at all. I always wonder why the population is still growing.

[@SJPace1776]

Trends in population lag roughly 20-30 years behind the causes. China recently began its decline, but this was set to happen in the 1980s and 90s. This is why these projections exist for the remaining of the 21st century. Even if trends reversed and people started having more kids again, which I doubt, we wouldn't see the impact until about 2060s. More likely is fertility rates go down even more causing an acceleration of decline. China due to its size will see the largest cliff losing 7-8 million people every year. That's the equivalent of a mid sized US state every year, year after year. We can see in countries like Italy how disproportionately decline causes feedback loop of people leaving places for opportunities. Cities empty and become ghost towns as the remaining population incredibly centralizes in major cities. It will be fascinating how humanity handles this coming century.

[@MacNerfer]

What you are seeing is not representative world-wide. South America, Africa, and other developing countries are still growing, some growing quickly.

[@clitisswood7330]

I tell these people to plan their demise, suicide or assisted suicide. No way my children and great childre will provide for them !

[@tyramasters-heinrichs921]

@@MacNerfer Actually they are not. South and Central America, don't look at the UN counts, look at the country counts, have been below replacement for more then a decade, and declining. In Africa only Niger (with the highest population growth rate at nearly 3.8 percent), followed by Equatorial Guinea, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi have population growth (all below Niger, but above 2). The rest of the continent is at replacement or below. Already countries in Africa are feeling the effect of not enough young people. China's aggressive population count during and following Covid found almost 100 million children missing, with again almost half that in missing births (births, like children were registered in multiple locations for funding purposes). The population drop in China (according to the UN and WEF) wasn't supposed to happen until 2050, but we all apparently missed it (including the Chinese) because their population Officially (after signed letters and formal complaints)stopped growing in 2021, but unofficially it started sometime between 2018-19. India's population is still growing BUT that's a false count because India's women of reproductive age are only having 0.8 when replacement is 2. Couple that with the fact though India has a very young population in total numbers, women of child bearing age only make up 22% of the demographic (the rest are men). And sex selection abortion is common place which means each year less females to males are born (the government has been working hard with religious leaders to stop the practice, as well as the practice of infanticide of girls, but it's been a hard road). Add in the removal of merit based education & hiring and we're in trouble in the West, no matter how you look at it. Take care and be well, I hope you have a great day.

[@ms28otavio]

south america is also shrinking mate. Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Suriname, Guyana and Paraguay are projected to shrink since woman are not having as much children as necessary to mantain the population. While bolivia, argentina, colombia, peru, equador and venezuela are projected to have a very little growth. The places that are actually growing are Africa, parts of the middle east and pretty much the south of asia.@@MacNerfer

[@Bakerygo]

Having children in today's world is so much more difficult and expensive than it used to be. My (paternal) grandfather had 8 children and not a single one of them went to university or had some great education. They just somehow managed to survive. Today you can't just pop kids right and left. The social pressure is huge. We must do everything perfect and buy the best things for our little angels. It's just honestly too much work for truly no return. No wonder that nobody wants kids anymore.

[@googlekopfkind]

Nobody forces you to be perfect or buy the best things. Its just your own excuses

[@Sammyli99]

where has "social-pressure" come from: Thank the CIA funding boyfriend FB for that...all intentional, they mapped your life, so YOU don't have one.

[@dallysinghson5569]

Well then, you go and have 20 kids instead XD

[@googlekopfkind]

@@dallysinghson5569 If you will. I think one or two shall be fine

[@hannathehappynomad]

@googlekopfkind as a mom of 2 kids living in a middle class suburb, I can tell you social pressure is huge. Everything is watched and judged. Even if parents like me try to fight it, the kids have hard time not fitting in in this spoiled overpriced world.

[@theflyoverlandpodcast7663]

As a self-reliant farmer living in a Quaker/Amish community deep in rural America... I CRINGE when I hear the assertion that "on a farm, kids are free labor:" It is clear to us that whoever said that first, and everyone who cites that authority thereafter, never lived the life of a working farm and didn't have children. "Children" are defined as human beings not of child-bearing age-let's say 12 and under. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCE are 0 -12 year-old-children a net contributor to the parents around the farm. Not on subsistence farms (animal/draft power) or industrial farms (tractors). Each child is a net consumer of the parents' time, effort, and capital. That consumption is overwhelming when the children are young. Young adults of childbearing age arbitrarily defined as "children", say 13 to 18, MIGHT have been a net addition in time, effort, and capital in the pre industrial setting, but not if they go to high school, as is (and has been) required (since the late 1940s). Farmers and farmers' wives spend essentially all of their non-working time driving their kids around to pointless activities devised by people who don't have and don't want children. Other than that... great work. Enjoyed the video.

[@TheSowinska]

Hi, please go to any real asian restaurant in ASIA, children are working there, even recently we were served by around 12-years old in one restaurant in Malta (we were surprised that this is also happening in some places of Europe). In Asia if they have house and a farm (poor families have unmechanised farms as it was mentioned earlier), children are also helping to parents...Children are free labour for parents in many parts of the world, just go outside the America and Europe. I'm from central Europe and I remember stories of my friends that when their families were working on a farm, no one could took care of them (everyone were involved), so they were also helping with the harvest and it was normal thing not long ago.

[@skyworm8006]

@@TheSowinska They do labour but they aren't a net contributor since kids aren't fully independent and need to go to school and such as well, which costs. Probably, pre-industrial kids on farms would be, but only after years of them not being (meaning it would take a while for them to return the resources invested in them). But the problem with the assertion is that people didn't have kids just to make them work. People had kids because it was just the thing you do. It's instinct, it's societally normal, there's no contraceptives, there's nothing else to do and no notions saying you shouldn't outside of famine if that is a threat. People didn't do an economic analysis and decide to never have sex again. What makes people have kids or not has little to do with financial viability. That was true then and it's true now. It's what they want, their lifestyle and culture and worldview and knowledge and sentiments. There is a strong current of anti-children sentiment and living an individualistic consumerism-based lifestyle that would be partially sacrificed for children. That's basically the problem summed up today.

[@heronimousbrapson863]

In the early industrial societies (the early 19th century mainly) children as young as five were working in mines and factories.

[@TheSowinska]

@@skyworm8006 '(...) has little with financial viability'. I could not disagree more, the lack of stability is the reason why I still do not have kids...

[@HoradrimBR]

I know old people that worked in the farm as young as 6 y.o. That was during the earlier 1960's in the poorest areas of Brazil, but it's a good reference of the historic (pre-industrial) use of child labour on farms. Most of the World still had child labour as a normal thing by 1940's.

[@EpsilonKnight2]

As a 30 year old millennial I've just accepted that I'm most likely not going to have any form of retirement and if I don't figure out a major vein of revenue or whatever I'll probably just end up in a ditch somewhere by the time I'm elderly if I get that far.

[@3komma141592653]

Bro you can't afford a ditch, that's only for the rich.

[@JBoy340a]

Good thinking. Worse that can happen is you have too much money.

[@lucasurbina4394]

Yeah or we'll just work until we die basically, honestly i hope I die before I'm 60 or so, because otherwise those last years won't be pleasant

[@own4lifTV]

Agree, 31 y/o here. I gotta work till im almost 70 y/o according to the current policies and data. Even though i am living in the Netherlands and we have one the best if not the best pension systems in the world, although i am even wondering if we will still have the same quality of life when i hit 70 y/o as people of this age have nowadays.

[@chrisperkins7331]

I have heard this said by many in your generation, so I have some advice for you. I am at the front end of the boomer generation (77 next month), so have watched life for the working stiff decrease over the last couple of decades. Understand the the economy is like the Titanic after it hit the iceburg, but before it started to sink. The damage is done, but many refused to belive it. So my advice is get off the boat while you still have personal resourceses to create a life boat for you and the people you care about. If you want to now how(no I am not trying to sell you anything) reply to this post and I will tell you how I have created in the third world a place to ride out the storm that we all see coming.

[@swdw973]

I'm 65. In my occupation as a technician dealing with industrial controls, the knowledge level and number of people coming in have dropped noticeably since 2000. Clients have told me they are worried about me retiring because they can't replace my knowledge level. And it's not just clients. Engineering firms with technicians use me to figure out problems their techs can't solve. They are concerned and are starting to talk to me about working with their techs at times and doing on the job training. Some people don't see an issue thinking AI can step in, but that is not possible with what I do. And I have been the troubleshooter for industries like pharmaceutical, water and waste water treatment, energy production, manufacturing, and the list goes on. You'll start seeing more an more issues with infrastructure starting in 10 years and proceeding from that point .

[@rileylavonne8863]

Actual on the job training? Most places expect you to be contributing 100% right off the bat and have 3-5 year's experience.

[@swdw973]

@@rileylavonne8863 This would be advanced training while doing the project, not beginner level and can be done while working on a 2+ person project. One owner understands the value of building his people. The company has an open door offer if I ever want to leave where I am right now.

[@EmptyZoo393]

Industrial controls is a rough one because there have been very few new projects in the field in the past thirty years. When all the offshoring was happening twenty years ago, a lot of folks asked themselves "Why go into a dying field?" It's going to take a push to revitalize it. At least at the university I went to, there was an additional issue where industrial controls is under the industrial engineering major, with no contact with electrical engineering and computer science where a lot of folks excited about programming end up. Early contact is just critical.

[@swdw973]

@@EmptyZoo393 There have been huge numbers of projects. I've been doing instrument startups in food & beverage, pharmaceutical, oil & gas, water, waste water and other areas. In my 60's and still extremely busy. Electricians are used to fill the gap in techs, but there are areas where they just don't have the knowledge. Analytical, radar, ultrasonic and process related issues are what usually throes them, along with all the digital networks like Fieldbus, Profibus, and industrial ethernet.

[@shawncooper8131]

The movie Logan's Run comes to mind. You need a lot of skilled minds to keep technology up. Like a rock in water, everyone has to blow hard into it to keep it up, lose some... and it sinks.

[@GhostNameless]

Population decline is good: deflation, plenty of real estate, cleaner streets, less loud, less crowded. People are shit.

[@spirofarmaku6772]

Less crime,less exploitation, less wars ,less inequality = better place

[@Daddy-Saxon]

That utopia you imagine would only be around for 2 decades at most. Once a population pyramid flips it won't flip back. Ask the romans...oh wait you can't.

[@CarmenElRose]

Why everyone acts like it's a bad thing? When they say japan had population crisis, what do they compare it to? People who had 4-10 children? It's stupid. In fact, we should welcome a decrease from such a lunacy.

[@TheWtfnonamez]

As Peter Zeihan once famously said .... In the olden days, children were basically free labour. In a modern urban environment, children are just a massive financial liability. Hence as societies modernise, the birth rate naturally declines.

[@neocortex8198]

hear me out Mandatory child labor... kids should be required by law to work, and the educational system must get them job ready before 10 even worse many people are prioritizing their elder relatives over kids. My solution is to ban this. Anyone with under 3 kids should be banned from refusing to work, anyone with 3 kids must also be banned from taking care of elderly relatives. Problem solved. Dementia patients and brain cancer patients cost around 300k a year in economic costs honestly the economic truth is that they never get better and generally they should be just abandoned so we can spend resources on raising kids and getting them working in stem jobs before they are teenagers

[@Tiasung]

Children arent that expensive. And in fact if they are educated and raised well, they increase a families fortune. The real issue is that most people have little to no capacity for love and caring, and thus don't want to spend time with their children. Which leads to children that didnt get parential care and love, and were raised poorly; who naturally have little interest in having children of their own as their experience as child was terrible.

[@neocortex8198]

@@Tiasungthe reality is that elders are the real expense for the most part, theres states in the usa where you can legally required to pay for whatever medical bills your elder relatives decide to get. Elder care and pensions are sucking the life out of our civilization. legit we spend 300k per year per dementia patient, and each senior on average 35k a year. The amount we spend on boomers is so comically large while young folks are struggling. Honestly its just much more important to have and take care of kids rather then dementia patients its an actual investment rather then a money pit. We have the wrong priorities as a society. We put so much on "comfortable retirement" often 1-2 decades long and rarely 3 that all our resources as a society go to that instead of things that would make us all better off.

[@azmodanpc]

@@Tiasung Sure, they aren't expensive if you raise them like my parents did in the 80s. Back then, it was common to have kids and not think about it. We had food insecurity, social services at the time were dealing with worse situations but if I hadn't been academically gifted the probability they would have intervened was very high. My niece is 6 years old and sure as hell isn't cheap to raise. The estimate of 250k to raise her to graduation isn't far off imho. How can she increase the family fortune in the next 15 years is beyond me (unless she starts working at 11 like some in the US are doing, in states were child labor laws are nonexistent). People talk of having children like it's the 70s and healthcare and education were far cheaper.

[@azmodanpc]

@@Tiasung In my case, my parents weren't able to raise me in terms of caring AND economy, that's their greatest achievement. They would have probably been happier without children.

[@BestOpinionHaver]

One of the core issues is population is collapsing in the parts of the world that can actually sustain a growth while its growing in the parts of the world that arent self-sufficient.

[@Libertyjack1]

Your wrong. These places are not lacking in self-sufficiency, they are exploited for their resources and ran by people with an agenda to keep their countries underdeveloped.

[@RandomMZ1412]

Exactly, therefore the burden will collapse everything

[@CrakenFlux]

well, lets go with birth control for south asia africa and india.

[@DIABOLICAL-6]

@@CrakenFlux mostly Africa.

[@darinherrick9224]

@@CrakenFlux Given a history of forced sterilization, murder of infant girls, and one child policy, your comment is in extremely bad taste.

[@Eresea]

I'm concerned that at no point you suggested that maybe limitless growth isn't sustainable, we don't know the perfect population numbers sure. But we SHOULD NOT make babies to ensure we get the pensions we've worked for.

[@kolbyking2315]

If you're 40, single, and childless, you need to make ~$66,000 to retire by 67. You need $1 mil saved and invested by 67. If you make/have less, (>60% of people), your retirement will need to be subsidized by younger taxpayers.

[@btuesday]

I have three grown kids. None of them have kids. None of their friends have kids. Very few of my friends have grandkids.

[@clarissat867]

In my family, and my generation more precisely, we are 13. I am 22, the youngest of my sisters and cousin. My oldest cousin is 38. For all of them, only one have started to have children.

[@simacrulum]

@@clarissat867 oh wow

[@joshanonline]

I know like 40 people (~20 family) and other tens related to them and clients at works. Only 1 had a Kid recently. First newborn I hear of since 2010! Several had kids back then. No more since then. It's like the world really ended in 2012.

[@Sammyli99]

grab your pension, while you can.

[@mitsu9894]

The younger generations (millennials and Gen z) are lonely because of technology and dating is so incredibly hard with the rise of dating apps. Also the economy (esp home market) and job market is not helping- we need to get financially stable before even thinking about having kids

[@HappyFlamingo8535]

My cousin works as a nurse and they have no maternity leave. That was amazing to me that hospitals in the USA have such crappy care for their employees!

[@jaytbo5676]

It's the US xD They literally work in hospitals and don't even get healthcare usually lol

[@282XVL]

Keep in mind that US hospitals are run by utterly ruthless private, for profit companies. And not only that, their customers are equally ruthless (some might say immoral or even illegally collusive) private, for profit, insurance mega-corps.

[@joemonroe9456]

How is the shithole California a "bright spot"?@@retiredbore378

[@jeremystonell690]

I'd rather no maternity leave and more money than maternity leave that I can never use. Employers factor in potential maternity leave as money they have to pay. Since I'm not sure I will have children (because no partner) and the difficulty of finding a partner is near impossible, the additional money is more important than the appearance of some benefit I can never use.

[@pm6613]

Don't get pregnant.

[@johnathan398]

I get that life is going to suck for the older population left behind on the downslope but I would think that allowing the population to continue to grow is an even worse outcome for humanity in the long run.

[@TheDabus1]

It will suck for the young more. They will be taxed to hell and back to pay for the old.

[@paulandersen8396]

​@@TheDabus1maybe the super wealthy should be taxed properly to balance societies books. We have never had so few people owning so much, and the rest of us are paying the price

[@nobodymister5435]

@@paulandersen8396 They are being taxed properly^^. They don't have billions in their checking accounts, they have assets. How do you tax assets? Make them sell shares of stock? Property? Very fair. I'd rather suggest you work a little harder to be able to sustain yourself and your family without outside help!

[@bristoled93]

Things like private jets and transporting cars by plane need massive taxes.@@nobodymister5435

[@rodneyfruge1562]

@@paulandersen8396 Do you actually understand the the 'super wealthy' as you put it are part of what allows you to buy you iphones and your iwatches and Starbucks and everything else you own. If they did not provide the capital for companies, companies would not exist. Everybody screams about the profits they make. Profits belong to shareholders. The largest shareholders are mutual funds. The majority of mutual funds are held in retirement funds (pensions, iras, etc...). Who owns these funds? Oh, that's right. Workers. Yes there are uber rich people. They actually pay more taxes than the rest of us combined. Oh, how about the poor people that are on the lower end in the tax brackets? I'm there by the way. Earned income credit is one of the most common credits claimed in the US. Many receive it. That is a refundable credit meaning that even if you didn't pay in equal to the credit you recieve, you get the difference. Oh, wait. That means that those individual's receiving it and crying about the rich not paying their share are hypocrites because they are not paying their share. As for, "We have never had so few people owning so much, and the rest of us are paying the price." You need to learn your history a little better. Our history is riddled with times that the poor had nothing and a choice few had it all. Every monarch, oligarchy and feudal type culture in the world in our past was worse. The poor owned NOTHING and the ruling class owned EVERYTHING! I'm broke as hell right now but I also know that if you over tax something (starve it) it dies. No margin, no mission, no reason to have a company open and doing business.

[@photonpattern]

As a parent, having a child is taking on another job. A whole, entire side hussle that sucks up your time and attention when you would otherwise be recovering and enjoying a slice of life away from work. The kicker... you have to PAY to have this second job... and you can't quit for 18 years at least. That's right, you get UNpaid to take on a second (or third) job. It's wild that we expect people to want to do this. The idea of the 'ideal' nuclear family isolated from societal support outside of school is absolutely not sustainable. We are going to be pouring money into the elderly over the coming decades (because they vote for it) while the incentive to have kids in Korea is so wildly negative that governments just can't get their head around that reality.

[@jackuzi8252]

This is part of it too. I'm GenX. During my childhood in the 80s, my parents provided a house, some clothes, a bike, and cooked one hot meal (dinner) per day. The rest of the time, we were essentially on our own. I have kids and am basically forced by society to spend much more time taking care of them than my parents ever invested in me. I can't leave them at the town pool for the day, they can't hang out at the Y without an adult, etc. I can pay for scheduled activities, but I have to drop them off and pick them up at set times. So even ignoring money, raising kids is at least twice as demanding today as it was 40 years ago.

[@connorferguson2269]

its because were to stressed to try and find a partner, get a house and pay for kid. its not complex, politions need to stop pandering to the 1% and start helping the 99%

[@OBEYTHEPYRAMID]

Why would they increase the benefits for a population more and more expensive and entitled? They can just take in immigrants and let us die. Fresh immigrants are easy to exploit and manipulate. The seconds and third generations become like us now, more expensive and entitled, and they are then replaced by other new immigrants who do the job for cheaper...A beautiful dystopian cycle.

[@travisporco]

bingo

[@MoKhera]

Exactly!

[@keithb7981]

In reality it is far worse, far more immoral, and outright evil. The current situation in this regard particularly in the western Nations but globally is primarily the direct result of the activities of the evil genocide Rothschild lizard clan and their evil rough child genocide illuminati operatives, beginning in 1815 immediately after the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo. The entire plan of the evil Rothschild clan and their new world order is the destruction and elimination of 3/4 or more of the global population and then the perpetual maintenance of breeding stock and selective breeding to produce slave class to support the rothchilds clan and their progeny as the rulers of planet Earth for perpetuity. If you don't understand this you have a lot of research to do and you need to understand that their total plant was actually written down by Albert Pike, a former u.s. confederate general, destruction of the population is the bassis for the implementation of perpetual total global domination and. In addition to this the Chinese Communist party has been on their own plan, which in many ways mimics major portions of the Rothschild genocide Illuminati New world order plan.

[@darkhorseman8263]

Politicians are sock puppets of the 1% we have studies showing us Democracy doesn't exist, and that we have always lived under economic feudalism. We've just been gaslighted into believing differently.

[@johnadkins5918]

I live in an area of low population, I’m 57 years old and am dreading getting old, this is because there are more retired people where I live than young or working age people, the problem this brings is there are not enough people to carry out the fundamental functions for a healthy society. I’m an electrician and have been well aware for many years that there is a severe shortage of electricians in my area this means that I am working harder now than I was twenty years ago and it’s just getting worse. Young people just keep leaving the area to go live in the city, I can foresee the area I live in becoming a pristine wilderness in the future.

[@tierramagica-h1q]

>> this means that I am working harder now than I was twenty years ago and it’s just getting worse. If you are one of the few electricians in your area then you should be able to work less for more money. I think you are doing something wrong here.

[@CaseNumber00]

I think why young people see an over population crisis coming is because we dont see it as a positive, we see it as negative. From my experience, I am having problems competing with others to get good paying jobs, competing with others to get a place to live, competing for mates. I am always comparing myself to my parents and I just seem to have it worse off. My mom rented a house and bought a new Mustang car in the 70s working at Del Taco (lits like a taco bell). My dad was a lazy kid after barely graduating HS but got a job as a city clerk after his mom threaten to kick him out if he didnt get a job. Now that very same position in the same city, you need a bachelors degree and untold amounts of intern hours. By that way, he eventually worked his way to a state agency position and retired. What ever systems we have going on, I dont think its working for most of us.

[@rzella8022]

Young people are getting a ton of deliberate propaganda about lgbt, careers for women, toxic male, over-population, that is helping them choose not to have kids. I love the internet & social media, but if that all went down for 10 years, you'd see an increase in relationships and children, regardless of housing prices being high. Perhaps gov could incentivize couples by selling vacant houses and plots of land dirt cheap like for a $1., if they promise within 5 years to renovate, and living in it for 5 years.

[@tribalismblindsthembutnoty124]

Inflation. Caused by government spending. You have appx 30k more items in your house than your parents did at your age. You don't have a mustang, but you easily could. Your place is also probably bigger and much more technologically advanced. You have more free time too. They were spoiled. You are spoiled. I am spoiled. We aren't working in the dirt like our great grandparents. After slavery ended my father's family worked in the cotton fields. This was before minimum wage. The entire family, especially children, worked the fields for pennies a ton. '16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt' Its an old song, but carries less weight for the new generation.

[@Lilitha11]

There is definitely the money issue, but also it is more acceptable for people to just not have children these days. In the past it was kind of seen as a duty, but now people have more freedom to do what they want, and a lot of people don't want children.

[@ex7229]

why do you care what your parents did and what they had ? Adapt. Why miss out on one of lifes greatests gifts because of what other people say or think . Why want an easy life?

[@herbayum76]

​@@ex7229if you like children become a sportscoach...you meet children that are interested and like to learn...children of your own are a liabillity and family life these days means hell

[@polymathica]

I tried to cite this video in a Facebook reply to a person who said, basically, that people should be self-actualized before having children, that people who are aware of carrying genetic defects such as autism, ADHD, diabetes, or other drug- and support-dependent conditions should not have children, that people who cannot afford it should not have children. I wanted to point out that partially thanks to many potential parents sharing her ideals, the economy as she knows it has become unsustainable. But apparently she realized she said something damned stupid, because Facebook told me she’d deleted her comment before I could post my reply. Bless her heart.

[@geisaune793]

You don't think anyone sees this coming? I could probably spend just 10 minutes making a list of like 50 youtube videos explaining this very issue. People have been aware of this for probably the past 20 years actually

[@szpunar85]

Had the same exact thought. Not only yt knows this, but the very goverments are aware of this since 80's and it has shaped immigration politics for decades. Title is a clickbait, correct one should be: "The World Population Crisis EVERYONE Sees Coming".

[@morham10]

Very important topic, but already factored into government policies. As you said it, many countries have already in-acted unpopular policies because of it. Here in Canada, our government is perusing agressive immigration growth in response to this. Love your work, but information on current proposals or initiatives would be a great follow-up video to balance-out the topic before calling for discussion. All the best.

[@FlaviusMaximus1967]

I first read about this in the 90s. Not exactly fresh news....

[@ashleykwasniewski4445]

Came to say this. Nobody but the tons of other people talking about it. Elon Musk went viral talking about it 😂

[@locobob]

When he says no one, I think he means it’s not getting enough attention. Yeah some countries are an acting some changes but it’s quickly becoming too little too late, just like with climate change. The main issue is to get people having more babies.

[@Laura-zw4jv]

most people I know that don't want kids is because we are facing so many challenges and catastrophes right now as human beings, mainly because of humans and the thus evolving climate crisis. Thus I believe that for now, this might not be too bad and probably when population is declining, maybe then the worlds population will hopefully stagnate at a sustainable level

[@captsorghum]

I don't know if climate is a valid reason to stay childless, but being inundated with climate panic seems to be having the same effect that threat of nuclear war and environmental panic was having in the 70's and 80's.

[@alextitei9748]

The Earth has multiple climates and they have been changing long before humans came into the picture. Even recently in the 70's there were talks of global cooling and there was a barrage of claims relating to global warming ever since the start of the last century. Nothing to worry about for now, except the fact that almost all the media articles relating to the evolution of Earth's climates have been pushing for over 120 years now, for a world government run by billionaires. Look up Tony Heller's KZbin channel to know more. He's an actual scientist and he has records and newspaper articles dating back centuries. Most economic and social downturns that have occurred in the West in the last few centuries were caused on purpose and they will may well continue during our lifetime.

[@alextitei9748]

Also, what you're experiencing is called demoralization and it is a state induced by said billionaires with the purpose of deterring people in the West(not limited to) from having children. So definitely have children. But try to develop those crucial critical thinking skills first and pass them along. Planning currently to do the same

[@arkad6329]

Lol. Most people I know lie about their life decisions. They like to pawn it off as something they had no control over. And the reason they are where the are is because it was thrusted onto them. When you truly look into why people are not having kids, it’s because the divorce rate is staggeringly high. And the cost of living is higher.

[@markigirl2757]

@@alextitei9748 why would billionaires be against people having kids? They need wage slaves form the poor! Also it’s not cheap to have a child. I have one child and I can barley afford them. So I think it’s fine for people to not have kids if they are not comfortable having one. Others who think they can afford and do it, go ahead.

[@OctoberOctopusM]

A problem that is very sensitive to mention is that the longer live expectancy is becoming a problem. In my county 50% of houses are owned by 1 or 2 pentioners. They bought their houses when they had children, who have now moved out. These houses are now missing for young families who need the space. The space consumption of the elderly is 2-3 that of families. Many families are living in flats with 3 rooms - so the parents sleep on the living room sofa. The elderly very often have 1-3 spare rooms. The next problem is the care of the elderly once they can't take care of themselves anymore. We will have parents fighting for child care against people fighting for care in an old peoples care home. Then there is also the health care issue, as the elderly have a much higher requirement for treetment. This will put a strain on the health care system. If you state these things you come across as agist and worse.

[@SusannaSaunders]

It is wealth inequality that has caused this. By making housing something to exploit and invest money into. If society made it illegal to own two plus houses, if you could only buy a house you intended to live in, if renting a house out for profit and exploitation was illegal, housing would be as cheap as biscuits! But the system of exploitation is so normalised that most people can't see that it's wrong! You shouldn't exploit basic human needs.

[@ricf9592]

I work as a gardener. All but one single family sized property I go to is inhabited by a single old person. Some of those properties are huge. The properties were bought when those living in them were doing very simple jobs, like working in a factory or a shop. Those buying those properties today have to contend with prices over four times what they were in relative wage terms. Huge loans are required to buy them today. And if the houses have no residential buyer, they are now snapped up by investment companies to rent out.

[@SusannaSaunders]

@@ricf9592 Its a mess. Housing should be a protected right. No person should be allowed to buy a house they are not going to live in. This needs to be made law now. Renting property out should be illegal as it is morally wrong to profiteer from human essential needs. Current owners keep their property but it can only be sold to someone who intends to live in it. These measures alone will realign the property market for housing and not for profiteering and stop the endless price spiral we are in now. Councils need to build social housing by LAW and have targets they MUST meet. We need radical reform with all of our essential services. Not just renationalised but made fit for public convenience - not profiteering companies.

[@Сергейстаромодныйов]

"These houses are now missing for young families who need the space" - excuse me, but how did these pensioners got to live in their place in the first place? They either bought or did build that home. The issue, in my opinion, is not the elderly people living in their homes, but that it became quite difficult nowadays for young people to build or buy a home, like the generation of their parents did.

[@madzaisa]

@@SusannaSaunders So what do you propose? House owners bought those houses with their hard-earned money. Where they supposed to keep their money if inflation rates are so high so keeping them in bank is just burning money and investment is risky?

[@eugenecostov]

This is by far the best video on KZbin that breaks down this problem in an easy understandable way. It covers everything : - how we got here - why this is the problem - potential solutions Thanks you so much

[@Liotzik]

In my opinion, it is not only time and money that is needed for a young family to have kids. It is also the mentoring regarding what they will face as a family and couple, how they should manage that amount of stress and responsibility so they will remain a couple and do not break apart.

[@rathelmmc3194]

I agree. The atomization of family structures makes it harder and harder to raise families. People used to have uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters and grandparents nearby to help. Now there's a lot of families where they have no immediate or extended family nearby to help.

[@fukuccccccc]

volunteerism is what makes nations great

[@MBergyman]

The developed nations' disdain for the family is evident in almost all major governments' policies. As a parent of 2 boys (a 3rd on the way), I am saddened at the weakened social structure we live in compared to my childhood. Most adults are more concerned about their status on social media and living "the good life" of being single, or married with no kids (DINKS) than they are about being mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. I have serious trust concerns with anyone without kids participating in the raising and mentoring of my children, because most of them do not have what I consider to be the requisite experience to weigh in on anything meaningful in that regard.

[@rathelmmc3194]

@@MBergyman I've stated that we should rethink universal suffrage and switch to married parents suffrage only. You should have to have some skin in the game of the next generation to vote.

[@Parker307]

Do you think that countries with rapidly increasing population like Pakistan and Egypt have a lot of money and time for kids?

[@Qwertworks]

I think generally we should rather work on making our society sustainable without constant growth. While growth certainly helps, I don't think it will ever be the end-all be-all solution.

[@nydydn]

By definition continuous growth is not an end-all solution. It has no option but to ultimately fail, so planing for continuous growth is planning failure, even if on the long-term.

[@ollydix]

Extract wealth from rich old people

[@SeanWinters]

Then how will we colonize the stars? Don't you want to have humans on Mars?

[@SeanWinters]

​@@ollydix"extract wealth from old people" what, the death tax(literally tax you pay for the inconvenience of dying) isn't enough for you? Old people's wealth goes to their kids. In America, it's whoever the parent wants to give it to. In other nations it's based on birth order and sometimes sex. My father, for instance, is spreading his inheritance equally. Will you rob me of my inheritance?

[@madzaisa]

@@SeanWinters And what exactly they are going to DO on Mars? Live there? Why? Resources? Perspectives of Asteroid mining is much more affordably than colonies on Mars. Looking further, IF speed of light IS the limit, there isn't much for us to explore, our species isn't suited for that.

[@alexanderrahl7034]

Ive played a fair bit of city/colony management sims in my life. It can be downright _catastrophic_ to suddenly lose a bunch of people. Banished was a famously hard game. Where getting over 200 people was considered and achievement. If you suddenly drop on population. Or even start dropping a lot over a period of years instead of all at once, you get problems out the ass that can put you into a death spiral. And you wont even necessarily notice them until its too late. Suddenly people start dying in winter from cold. Why? Not enough charcoal being made. Your food reserves are low. What happened? Well, you have several less farmers, and didnt stockpile enough food this year. Okay so people are going hungry and feezing. Divert more people to charcoal and hunting. Except as they try to catch up, more people die off, and now _everyone_ is hungry and cold. Maybe you survive the winter and lose half your people. But now your supply chain is shot to shit and you have to shuffle the people you have left to fill the roles that keep them all alive. And thats in a video game, where you are the god of a medieval village controlling their lives. Not a modern democratic society full of people who get mad when you tell them what to do.

[@jillybe1873]

Don't tell me playing video games all the time makes you depressed 😊

[@alexanderrahl7034]

@jillybe1873 can't say. Although I will say, the quote "outward environment reflects inward state of mind" is a pretty accurate one. So seeing someone's room and home can give you a glimpse into their mental state. And there's no shortage of gamer rooms that uh... 👀

[@feynstein1004]

Interesting thought, but I don't think this applies to real life because the game you mention is a command economy which can't react to changes quickly and has a much lower self-correcting capacity. Economies in the real world aren't command economies and correct themselves to changes much more quickly. That doesn't mean they're perfect, of course. But the situation won't be as dire as in the game, hopefully 😅

[@hjn123]

Bravo, well said sir.

[@stalincat2457]

Banished had a fatal flaw though: Once food shortages were established, a death spiral would be inevitable as farmers and gatherers would starve to death while transporting food to a storehouse. Meanwhile, others would raid the storehouses in order to stock their homes instead of rationing. No wonder those guys got banished...

[@ammarscool]

I am sure people who thought we were over populating thought they had it all figured out, the trends change, especially now a days

[@Pohleece222]

I believe humanity will rely more and more upon robotics and AI to replace this decline in the workforce. It would be informative and interesting to see how many jobs have been eliminated since the inception of such technologies in our contemporary environment.

[@Zelp789]

I'm pretty sure civilization is going to collapse from global warming and peak oil before 2050. There won't be any AI or robots.

[@waltermeerschaert]

Indeed, we are replacing ourselves with robots. They are our intellectual descendents.

[@xponen]

the cost to train AI is tens of million USD. OpenAI spent $63million to train GPT-4. The cost to serve ChatGPT to user is half-million USD per day. You will find that, in time, use of robotic will not be widespread even tho the technology exist.

[@garethbaus5471]

​​@@xponenThe cost for any individual user is almost always cheaper than the cost of paying the people it replaces. Training an AI is a one time cost, and the operating costs are divided between millions of users.

[@brianhirt5027]

I agree this is a likely course. Problem is they're not exactly syncing. All the robotics stuff looks set to mature before we even begin to hit the downslope. So it'll functionally displace about a third of working population, further exacerbating the problem down the way.

[@iloveprivacy8167]

Dude, you mentioned cost of living first, but only very briefly before going on to list the 'reasons' women remain childless as though CoL didn't factor in at all. My whole life (80's child), I was told "don't have kids if you can't afford them". Well, we've had at least three significant recessions in my adult life, I'm told that I'll have six entirely different careers in my working life, homeownership is increasingly out of reach - where does *anyone* find that confidence??? Related: when I was a kid, Reagan/Thatcher had not yet succeeded in entirely dismantling the official social safety net, and neighbourhoods were still a thing. Now, we largely have neither, and the judgment of parents who can't do it all with a smile is *harsh*. (In retrospect, the philosophy seems to have been: why pay to support childrearing here, when we can import fully-grown humans from abroad?) Oh, and the world is on fire, and we have studies showing that married women are less happy and less healthy than their single counterparts, because most men never bothered stepping up to do their end of the 'second shift'. I have only admiration for people who take this on, but when literally decades of sustained, thankless heroics are required - you can't really wonder why everyone isn't lining up. Edit: and your proposed solution is to give tax credits to the *rich* to incentivize them to have kids?! Seriously: people are either rich enough to not have to worry about a tax credit (or that the next administration will reverse it), or not (which is most of what remains of the middle class at this point). Capitalism isn't actually the best approach to absolutely everything - and we understood that in the 50's. Sorry: this vid is getting a downvote.

[@deavilanancy]

👏🏼👏🏼 Spot on my guy.

[@tanler7953]

That was the price paid to bring women into the workforce. Married women are less happy. Just as tough on men as on women.

[@angelinimartini]

Well said on everything!

[@josielynn6369]

​@@tanler7953the price that should be paid for women going into the workforce is equity in labor.... not everyone blaming women for their own unhappiness at now having to do more work than ever

[@lenon3579ify]

Perfect comment!!

[@Chaotic-Cacti]

We should build our world for sustainability rather than growth or decline.

[@cm4life]

Maybe we should talk about how concentrating wealth into such a small number of people makes it impossible for the rest of us to grow and thrive. Or how we treat women in particular. Want more babies? Create safety for women. Bodily autonomy so that childbirth is not a death sentence. Cover the cost of insurance for maternity and make sure that children can get adequate healthcare. Give people more than two weeks of combined vacation and sick time so we can actually see and enjoy our kids. We are already being worked to death. Love, everyone younger than the baby boomers

[@leokearley4145]

Reducing the population by half maybe bad at the time of the reduction, but it will give generations to come a chance to stop thinking growth is the measure of success and use sustainability and cohesive social structure as the sensible yardsticks.

[@TheTomoyaNagase]

while harsh and an kinda evil we have seen these scenarios play out in small in past times. When you have too many poor people, not enouth land with unhappiness on the rise the leaders often resorted to wars, this either got them new stuff, killed of a bunch of their people and the other's people and now there was the same resources and land as before being split among less people while the war is such a scary thing that all other problems get pushed aside, replacing the general unhappiness with dead for your survival and a humongous wave of relieve once it passes. It's a nasty way of handling things but extremly effective.

[@johnbrown7911]

As mentioned in the video, a population reduction even a significant one is not really the problem. Rather a demographic inversion is what we are really up against. An environment that has more net consumers than net producers is not sustainable. The more this imbalance becomes a reality the faster the imbalance happens and thus a literal collapse.

[@arkad6329]

Ok Thanos

[@arkad6329]

@allan339 you have to be sarcastic

[@chadrowlett893]

Farmers know what sustainable is, we live it. Managing herds and crops. City people have no idea how to do what we do. Farmers can fix anything and fabricate. City people mostly can only do thier job at best. No skill except for watching TV

[@runningraven]

I think the incentivization needs to start at a different point. When I was a child (and teenager), motherhood was something I really wanted for myself. Why? It was presented to me as something beautiful. A privilege. Hard work, but still a privilege. It proved true for me. I had eight pregnancies in total, only three of them resulting in live births. And all of those three were met by a society that made it a good experience to have (in my country we had long maternity leave, the importance of mothers was still recognized). Now? I wouldn't have a baby in my country anymore. Motherhood is looked down upon. You're "just a lazy woman" if you want to stay with your kids. Daycare is "so much better for socialization" than being with your mother for the first few years, and you're under constant scrutiny for every little mistake you may or may not make in your child's nutrition, education, and socialization. It's just not a good thing to choose anymore. Motherhood doesn't have to be romanticized, but it has to be at least somewhat attractive to make it a good choice for women. That's the point I'd start at. 🤷🏻‍♀️💙

[@paulas_lens]

I think the lens society looks through is too much one of economic where it needs to be a full spectrum set of lenses. Have you seen anything on community intelligence and how humans have "lost" it? It popped up on my feed yesterday - it was an interesting concept that is mulling in my mind. Our short attention spans and the endorphin rewards our minds get here on some social media and quick-paced TV is hurting our ability to think longterm and indepth. Our judgements are therefore quick and good:bad far too soon.

[@annakortukov2845]

Couldn't say it better! Thanks 👍

[@kathykelm1354]

This discussion hasn't mentioned the suffering caused by the bearing of human children. Men have no idea how awful it is. But young women, do. Then there is the ordeal of trying to raise them alive to adult independence. I had two children. One died newborn of a heart defect, the 20 year old by suicide. I too suffered a respiratory arrest during birth and nearly died. They broke my tail bone to speed the delivery and the pain made me stop breathing. I still have difficulties. I was extremely nauseated for 18 months of my life. My body is stretched and loose. And so I do not recommend childbearing. You are sending a woman into combat. The data show one thing clearly: there is no such thing as maternal instinct. I draw a polite veil over evidence of men strongly feeling the desire to be a father. But when a woman has survived childbearing, she will often say enough. That is what the data say.

[@MsTamtee]

@@runningraven this is the one ☝🏾

[@runningraven]

@@kathykelm1354Tragic. What wusses we've become, I mean. Millions of years we've found strength in the experience, and now, where it's technically safer than ever, we're too weak to do it? Well, I don't think so. It's hard, but I'm someone who does hard things. 🤷🏻‍♀️💙

[@hawkbait2098]

Children don't enter the workforce until they are in their twenties - until that point they are dependents. It would be interesting to see how the combined number of dependents (non-workers) is changing over time.

[@The_Reckoning_Is_Here]

Not true some US states lowered the age to 12 or 14

[@michaelmorton6566]

thats not true lots of kids enter the workforce as teenagers ( both my brother sister and myself started working at 15 ) and in other countries there are lots of little kids working just to survive

[@ashton1952]

Maybe where you come from. I started working at 14. In parts of Africa there are open mines full of little kids working to bring out the minerals needed for stuff in the west. Someone can correct me but it's for electric car batteries as I understand.

[@Bookhermit]

Children born now will NEVER join the workforce - they won't be able to compete with automation and AI.

[@stevechance150]

Peter Zeihan likes to say, "It takes twenty years to make a twenty year old".

[@reinerbrawn1920]

Population collapse. Bad for humans. Great for everyone else in nature. Remember 2020 covid. In just two month of lockdowns, the dolphins swam in the docks, sea turtles mated and reproduced on the beaches, venice cannals cleared up, deers walked the streets. Satellite image of China and Italy showed a massive drop in air pollution. India's sky became clear for the first time in decades. Population collapse is a curse for humanity, a blessing for everything else.

[@maksminimus3089]

Automation has been supposed to reduce demand for workforce, so what's the worries now about too few workers? Perhaps the problem is with company bosses/shareholders reaping in disproportionate amounts of profits - money which should be distributed across wide population, working or not (ie. replaced by automation, which is by design).

[@SuperSilverTrees]

​@markstein2845 The whole humanity will disappear??? How? Look up "Toba bottleneck". There were maybe only as little as 10,000 people at certain point of human history, yet here we are at 8 billion people... How the hell is humanity going to disappear?

[@jonymanay]

Its about profits. Why have a factory making x10 more when your population collapses and demand falls 50%. The problem is elites in charge are too greedy and siphoning money everywhere. They buy all the houses and rent them. Buy all the land. Run gov and tax everyone except themselves. They pull levers everywhere for short term gains. Let in more migrants to fill the gaps. The list of issues is massive. And they just accept it as boom bust cycles.

[@dixonhill1108]

Not if automation works the way some predict, it might cause the opposite problem where everyone is sitting on their arse sucking up the UBI with nothing better to do than breed. @markstein2845

[@halmotley2924]

If things get really bad eventually there will be deindustrialization then a primordial stars where humans have a high birthrate with Darwinian selection.

[@AlCole-kv1zg]

@maksminimus3089 unfortunately you need humans to do a lot of the mindless labor jobs. Computers seem to be great at creative tasks but they are not good at sorting through garbage, driving a vehicle, unloading a truck and sorting. I wish it were the opposite.

[@ladyeowyn42]

We both work to support one child and are often overwhelmed by lack of time. My husband got a vasectomy during the pandemic. Zero regrets.

[@lilarrin1220]

@traybern So you agree that their decision was a good one, since as you said, they aren't capable of raising more than one child.

[@samalford3289]

@traybernone kid can create a lot of problems. I had one with autism. It was the worst times of my life.

[@shaunmckenzie5509]

​@traybernThey wouldn't have known they'd struggle with one before they had one. At least they realise that now and aren't having anymore like many other idiots do.

[@ashton1952]

​@trayberna very harsh attitude, grow some soul. When it's you in a similar situation then you'll learn some empathy.

[@raismin739]

@traybern how much time do you work for week? how much time do you sleep per day? do you know how hard is to mantain a family when you see them only for breakfast? do some calcs kid... i go out from home at 5pm to work and i get back around 23:30 i go back when my family is sleeping. my brother goes to school at 7am, I'm sleeping at that time. my mother work from 10 am 8 pm. I get up, have breakfast and then my family is out... my litle brother go back we have lunch together and i'm preparing to leave for work, i get back from work and my family is sleeping. now imagine this scenarious if i was a mother: see my kid for just lunch, see my husband/wife for just lunch. how can you keep the family go? do you think it's sane to have a kid with this therms? If i'll ever have a kid, i want to give them as much love as possible, i want to make them grow up in the right way and i can't do that without seeing them. I'm sorry, but i prefer not having a kid that giving them a miserable life

[@marklewus5468]

You mentioned some countries had raised their retirement age to 67. So did the United States. For anyone born after 1960 the “full retirement age” is 67 and I’m sure it will continue to go up.

[@robinkelly1770]

Ever notice how those that raise the age of retirement are the same ones doing sedentary non physical jobs. They are unable to stand in 40⁰c (106⁰f) and dig ditches, or work 20m (70ft) from the ground on a ladder or crawl through roof spaces in boiling heat at age 45 but expect 65 year olds to do so...

[@Alehzinhah]

I'm pretty sure our generation mostly won't achieve 67 to retire, at least 70% won't last as much. Our "old people", now over 80 nowadays, have retired around 50 to 55. If we have to work 10-15 Years more, with worse food, worse living conditions, more stress... sure we won't last as much

[@sweden_is_xxxx]

I'm 50. I expect never to be able to retire. At least not with much pension to talk about.

[@RandomUser6947]

Denmark has actually raised retirement age to 70, if you are born after 1971.

[@Alehzinhah]

@@RandomUser6947 let's see how many will actually retire.

[@DeeShee-eo1up]

Idk but the society now is telling me its not so bad to live in an old ancient way, planting crops , have own farm and no need for money for anything. Though i still want my internet and electricity, the rest of it, im so over it.

[@HexerPsy]

Here in Europe its prohibitly expensive to have more than 3 children. At 4 you need more rooms than the average house has, a van instead of a car... etc.

[@agme8045]

In Europe and everywhere else. Who wants 4 kids tho, that’s way too much (and I’m speaking as someone who has 2 other siblings. 3 kids is already a lot)

[@SAbowser]

How much of the affordability argument is actually due to changed standards of living? The idea that each kid needs their own room doesn't match the reality that the vast majority of humans in history (including in Europe) grew up with. People's expectations for their home, car, diet, fashion, lifestyle, etc. have all changed a lot and for the most reflect a higher expected standard of living compared to past generations. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing...why wouldn't we want to live better lives than our ancestors if we can? I just think that element is left out of the case that "things have just become way more expensive" argument most of the time.

[@HexerPsy]

@@SAbowser I think you are correct - and there is also a feedback loop there. Having fewer children means you can spend more resources on yourself and your few children. Naturally so, the designs made for consumers consider the average trend and expectations of buyers - which makes it spiral. And, because consumers are expected to buy for 2 parents and up to 2 or 3 children, prices will match the demand. All these things influence each other as our standard of living, market forces and our income converges towards some slowly shifting average.

[@sebastianwetherbee9465]

@@SAbowser I totally agree, compared with almost all of human history even the poorest segments of developed countries have more material wealth. It's changing expectations, in other words, cultural not economic.

[@masalli]

@@SAbowser Partly true. But, for example, in the old days, the back seat of a car could be full of children. Someone could have been in the back of the station wagon. Now everyone must have their own seat and seat belt. If you have a big family, you need a big car. Before, family discounts meant the whole family. Now those family discounts apply to a maximum of four people. Before, the family and neighbors helped in taking care of the child and gave their old clothes etc. Now this kind of behavior is quite rare.

[@awdtw]

My wife and I only have one child. We both had siblings. Out of 5 families we have as close friends, 4 of them are the same as us, came from larger families, only have one child now though. The other one actually has 3 kids. Cost and time was the main reason from what we can all gather through occasional talks about it. We dont have enough money, or time. No such thing as a single income here in Australia unless you accept you aren't getting far, or are extremely rich already.

[@Erwachsener1492]

one friend of mine has 1 child, 1 has three. The rest of my whole circle of "friends" (10-20 pairs) has 0 children. They are all aged 28 to 35. None of those plans to have children. Im from germany.

[@Israel_Two_Bit]

​@@Erwachsener1492 OMG! I can't believe that. I'm in my 40s and I still don't have kids, but I'm dying to have them. I think children are about the most valuable inheritance we can leave in the world. If you raise a kid to become a good, honest and happy person, it just makes the world a better place.

[@katiegreene3960]

Bingo. One parent income being sufficient in the past is biggest factor because the family had time for kids and to run a household. We have one child and we both work and sometimes we feel completely overwhelmed. If we had one income and a simple home with a yard we would've had maybe 4 kids.

[@Erwachsener1492]

@@katiegreene3960completely understand you. Me and my wife we would strongly consider having children if one income was enough. Im an educator, shes working in IT. But both income and job security arent good enough to rely on only one income. We are sharing the housework, Im doing all the shopping and I cook (fresh, no industrial prepared foods), each week I spend about 10-12 hours with my obligations. My wife is washing our clothes and cleaning the house, it takes her about 6-10 hours a week. We both work around 30 hours a week. If we had a child, despite loving to spend time with it, we would be at and above our limits. Its not about downsizing one of our hobbies, its about having almost no time off. You are ALWAYS in demand, either your employer or your family. And over the years (and this is at least until puberty) this really uses up your energy. I also find this very sad because family should be something thats also invigorating. What is all this technological and economical progress worth if it makes having a family something that weakens you? People nowadays very much focus on topics like climate change (very important though), (geo)politics and economical growth. But the fact that our populations are literally DIEING before our eyes is a very potent sign that our society as a whole has completely lost track. Overpopulation is not the problem, at least if we somehow can handle (over)consumption. Its people losing hope in the future so much that they decide that having children, family, is not worth it. Its a very very sad status quo we have reached.

[@lacylaizure6540]

Same in a lot of places in the US. The other issue is even if you are a 2 income family, childcare is about the equivalent of 1 income making it almost pointless to work because you are essentially working for pennies on the dollar.

[@ckcox]

I am a clinical therapist and I spend a lot of my time with GenZ and Millennials talking about how they DO NOT want to bring children into our volatile political climate... the threat of authoritarianism/fascism in the US is real.

[@robertd9850]

It's not real but they believe it because schools focused on liberal indoctrination that created a non-existent big bad boogeyman instead of focusing on education.

[@BloodSweatandFears]

Explain please?

[@robertd9850]

@@BloodSweatandFearsMany of the people screeching the loudest don't know what authoritarianism and fascism even are and way too many think white supremacists, Nazis, fascists, etc., are ubiquitous which is ridiculous. But it is because they keep changing the definition of what those words mean until they now mean any person, especially a white person, who disagrees with them about anything politically and probably about any subject for that matter. It is a disarming tactic that has been overused until it has become the little boy who cried wolf.

[@dlg5485]

@@BloodSweatandFears If you need such a basic statement explained, you may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

[@BloodSweatandFears]

@@dlg5485 Well not necessarily as people throw around the word “fascist” without actually knowing the definition. And I wanted to know exactly which side is being referred to as fascist.

[@mmadmic]

In Belgium, we already have all the possible legal advantages, discounts, birth bonus ,family allowance, maternity and paternity paid leave, partial work with compensation, distancing measures in difficult professions ... But the problems are 1/ destruction of old values such as family, marriage, ... 2/ no hope for the future 3/ cost of life, housing cost 4/ both parents who work

[@SuperGlue4321]

@@mmadmic destruction of which values? Those that thought women were supposed to be birthing cows, that will do menial labour at home and breed babies. That one? Yea Good Riddance.

[@salczar]

Just as we were told over population was going to end in calamity, now we’re being told the opposite….I think even if we lose half the population human civilization will be fine…our ability to solve problems is greater than ever

[@jabuki2]

Social collapse within a generation time span is a very real possibility. Capitalism is great for making cheap widgets but not for addressing rapid changes since people are the gears that keep the system moving. At least until AI can fill the gaps. The question is how many people can economies lose and how quickly while still functioning? People can adapt quickly but interconnected systems aren't so robust. I think transforming the education system will be huge for how fast we can adapt to drastic changes. Having everything explained clearly once for all students to access online regardless of time/location will turn teachers into tutors helping clarify for those that need it rather than the current army of teachers all trying to teach the same thing in isolated single classroom. The current system leaves little to no time for helping those who struggle and also slows those who excel.

[@moneyobsessed]

not all halfs are comparable, if the remaining half is made of 90% functionally illiterate and unenployable people lets say societies will be hard pressed

[@TroySchoonover]

Tell that to your 401(k) when it happens.

[@autohmae]

"our ability to solve problems is greater than ever" well, that's because their are more educated people on earth than ever, but with population decline will this still be the case ?

[@learningisfun2108]

I worry about the loss of human capital. Imagine the progress that 1 billion people can make; the breakthroughs, the slow, gradual progress, the geniuses, ….

[@benc5332]

Why is less people bad? I haven’t been to many places and said, “you know what this place needs? More people.”

[@savioblanc]

As you get older, everyone around you is also getting older. You get sick, you have no one running the hospitals or too few people there to look after you. You're house needs some renovations to make it safer for your aging self? Sorry, not enough people to do that either, which means it becomes more expensive to even hire them. You want fresh fruits and vegetables to buy from your local grocer? Sorry, not enough people to pick them, sort them and transport them to your grocer. Want to go for a drive? Sorry, not enough people to fill the petrol stations. Your EV battery died? Sorry, not enough people to mine the elements that created that battery and the few there are are now out of your price range. Your trash hasn't been collected. Sorry, not enough trashmen available. Go live in the wilderness for a month and see how well you fare without people around you. Grow your food, treat your own wounds, sow your own clothes. Cos that's the future we're all collectively looking forward too. And that's the positives. The real horror is that we likely won't even get to that point. If history has taught us anything, it's that people who belong to and practise an authoritarian, child bearing ideology will likely take over and those that do not align with it will be "cancelled"

[@Peter-mj6lz]

@markstein2845We’ve had population declines before, baby booms, so how do we know that it would be forever declining? Also the world and generations change a lot that priorities change.

[@Peter-mj6lz]

@@savioblancTechnology is also becoming more and more automated.

[@rendezone]

We’re 36 and 38. Work pressure and costs of living are too high for us to pursue a second child. Plus, grandparents are older or far away which means we carry the majority of responsibility in raising our child. The German state subsidises having children to a decent extent, but not enough to make it easy, and culturally we are far from Sweden and Scandinavian countries, so employers still don’t get it - it’s hard to find work if you demand work in less than 40hrs/week to sustain a family life. I think our generation also wants to spend enough time with our children to make sure they grow well attended and develop emotionally better than we were. We’re not willing to compromise below a minimum and I think that’s because we’re more educated about children development, and way more conscious about a lot of things.

[@earlysda]

Maybe not be so worried about having a high income?

[@kwimms]

You picked an "educated" women who thinks she's a man and doesn't want to stay home and raise your children... too bad for you!

[@skeptick6513]

You are exhibit A as to how the economy has been grinding people and families in to the ground. Came from a family of 4, mom took care of the home, never worked and my blue collar dad gave us a very nice middle class life. My parents came from very large families, 11-15 kids and similar although as first gen immigrants they did have a harder time economically. Your child will have an even harder time, they had better pick the right career and make good life choices or they will have a very challenged life.

[@earlysda]

@@skeptick6513skep, actually, the previous generations had a more difficult time earning a living, but they valued life, so enjoyed having kids. Today we are more about pleasing self and destroying life - witness the 46,000,000 destroyed in the womb just last year.

[@SimPitTech]

your problem is that you think your problems are other people problems. That said we were screwed by the boomer academics and tree huggers with their doomsday cults. We need to teach the kids how life works. that man have to earn their value and worth (and they have to start early like it used to be - no extended puberty to 30s) and women need to preserve their value (no tolerance for hoes). The sad truth is that for society to work is that mans purpose in life is work hard and suffer to build worth and womans purpose in life is to be grateful she doesn't have to and take care of the man that can feed her and their kids. We need to let the kids know that in real life good man is ALWAYS the prize and woman finds her happiness when she is with valuable man and she is a woman rather than degenerating herself to the man she desires (and same goes for the man). Man in their 20s need to go back to grinding on their value and worth and they need to pass and ignore all the women that failed to preserve theirs. The society needs to stop encouraging feminism, doomsday cults and simping. Boomers thought they can have it all - and they did. but all at our expense and the future generations. The other problem is young guys are marrying too old girls (almost the same age) and by the time man is in his peak (mid 30s) the woman in her mid 30s is 10 years past her due date and in the mean time the couple wasted money and resources on useless stuff like travels, parties and so on and they are broke and can't afford anything.

[@DrYeol]

I've read research about why people are having less children. - 10% didn't have children by choice. - Another 10% had fertility problems. - The vast majority 80% wanted to have children but didn't for different reasons. The research summarized the 80% problem as "Unplanned childlessness". Reasons varied from: - Not finding the right partner. - Wanting to reach a certain point in their studies/career. - Want to improve their financial status. For a lot of people, it was an endless cycle of wanting to reach the next step in their lives and personal goals. Children weren't a priority; other things always came first until it was too late to have children.

[@lynnlytton8244]

In biology, you always expect a population crash after a population explosion. If we really want people to have kids, we're going to have to address the things that make it miserable to have kids. It's isolating to raise kids as a nuclear family, and there is little support for new parents unless they have enough money to hire it. Young couples don't, typically, and single parents have even fewer options. In other news, Paris is still there and has not been burned to the ground.

[@cathjj840]

No, Paris isn't burned totally down yet, but it is completely overrun with tourists. Hoping it's just a post-covid catch up thing, which is also affecting the main tourist spots elsewhere. Hey people - spread out, check out the countryside and small, peaceful countries not on everyone's bucket list. Venice is now charging €5 a pop to visit and the locals can't even live there anymore. Stay away for awhile.

[@red..ridding..h00d]

Exactly. The problem is the system not our bodies. We are burned out completely

[@geoffreyharris5931]

Good. There are far too many people in the world by a factor of about 100.

[@DailyPragmatism]

@@cathjj840….tourists? Look again in 5 years. I suspect the tourists you think are overrunning Paris will still be there.

[@MikeFeatherston0700]

@@geoffreyharris5931 "There are far too many people in the world" - and thats where egoism comes in. Theres to many people making to many problems - for "me". theres too much competition, too much money goes for them and not for me. We all think as one with being individual. It's that simple :/ .

[@camwood7600]

Infinite population growth on a finite planet is the definition of insanity. Best to manage the challenges of a declining population than have it manages for us. And the metric that should be used to measure whether there's too many people isn't that you can simply feed them. It's the way in which you feed them. Industrial agriculture is borrowing from future generations. We aren't sustainable now, so until we can be, a decline in population is necessary.

[@beesmcgee4223]

Exactly this. Just look at how much of the Earth's surface is now farmland. Ecosystem collapse is not a problem we can currently solve

[@ReddlyFeddly]

well said. it's a hard truth to accept for most but if our societies can't figure out the sustainability aspect then nature will take its course. seems like we're living through the Fermi paradox.

[@nukl3argam3r38]

Wdym "we are borrowing fro. Future generarions"?

[@garethbaus5471]

The only hard limit for the planet's population that can't be solved with decent engineering is heat dissipation, and that limit would still allow for several trillion people on the planet. The theoretical maximum population of the solar system itself is once again limited by heat dissipation, but it is several orders of magnitude higher still.

[@garethbaus5471]

​​@@beesmcgee4223We have the knowledge needed to increase the average food yield of a given area of land by about 2 orders of magnitude on average through crop selection and greenhouses using existing technology without even considering the potential of vertical farming which adds about another order of magnitude to that potential as well the potential output from converting the ocean's surface for agricultural use which has the potential to yield a significant amount of food in its own right. It would raise the average cost of living, but ultimately humanity's population isn't really limited by the earth's potential for agricultural production.

[@lizziesmusicmaking]

Crazy high housing prices compared to local wages in my area make it very hard to buy a home for younger people. And there's been a rental shortage for many years, and rental prices have now spiked. Jobs are also often precarious (though that's less bad the past couple of years) and childcare is very expensive. And couples often break up, which makes the finances even worse. Basically, I think the biggest reason the birthrate around here is so low is that people aren't sure they will be able to continue to afford children for the amount of time it takes to raise them. And by the time they're financially stable enough to be willing to risk it, the women are often getting too old to bear children easily. So they maybe have one with great difficulty, or none at all without desiring to be childless. If a couple is determined to have kids, they often leave and move far away, out of the city or to another province (not BC Canada). There are other factors, but I really think finances and housing is a huge one in my country, province and city.

[@kaybrown7733]

We're done feeding the wealthy, business, government, and religions' purses and ranks. Our wombs are not a cash register. This thought process is why I started cheering on the end. If the people at the top can only be bothered to help families once it's in their best interest and regularly refer to common people as human capital stock then this system deserves to end. I hope more men and women refuse to be cogs in the machine so that it stops.

[@umarjongi3590]

Don't worry, the Sun will become a red giant. Humans will not survive.

[@miwi9883]

People aren't human capital..... human capital means knowledge.

[@kaybrown7733]

@miwi9883 They don't say human capital. They say human capital stock like livestock. See the difference?or are you intentionally misrepresenting my words?

[@miwi9883]

@@kaybrown7733 the human capital stock just means the level of human capital, in other words the level of knowledge. Please educate yourself.

[@kaybrown7733]

@miwi9883 if you belive that drivil I have a very nice bridge to nowhere to sell you! 🤣🤣🤣

[@thebagg4553]

What’s best for society is not always best for humanity

[@MissJuultje1]

I just want to add to the reason why people are not getting children (in most EU countries): it's just too expensive. A kid costs about 200.000 to raise. That's not even a small (61 square feet) appartement in my country. So what the hell am I gonne do without a roof? I make that in 9 years with a higher education degree...

[@dragonstooth4223]

we have good child care help (somewhat) in my country ... its too expensive for us to have a second child. I would love a second child but I can't afford two mortgages (especially with current inflation) as that's how much child care is (the same as paying my mortgage) and to be honest, with the horrible way we have to work in offices and stuff ... the work life balance is screwed and I am struggling to be there for one child while still having to fit in all the other stuff I have to do as an adult.

[@AlbertoGarcia-qr7qg]

i agree

[@dcgamer1027]

I think we have to pivot our whole system away from a growth focused one and towards a sustainability one, whatever that looks like. The population issue is just one of many related to our growth based system running out of room and time to grow. When we have sprinted this whole time and the fastest people grew the most and won we are in serious danger of smacking into the the wall in front of us way too hard.

[@alex29443]

I'm not sure that makes any sense. I think we need to build more houses, stop over-educating people with useless degrees, and provide cheap energy, maybe also ban social media and rebalance the legal protections in parenthood that currently massively favour mothers to the point of disincentivising fatherhood. Reduce the cost of living, increase opportunity for relationships, reduce cost of parenthood. I think we are actually growing in an unbalanced and unhealthy way, but the solution is healthier growth, not no growth at all.

[@dcgamer1027]

@@alex29443 I'm in favor of most of that too, but it's clear there are going to be issues when markets start to run out room to grow, what do we do then? And what do we do about countries that aren't growing at all due to a shrinking population? We have to start thinking long term, infinite growth is not possible eventually we will hit a wall especially if we keep speeding our growth up faster and faster, who knows when that will be but the faster we are growing when we do hit that wall the more it will hurt

[@jaytbo5676]

*hands u a medal* For being the first self aware and intelligent comment I have seen on youtube about this subject ever

[@stephentrueman4843]

Completely agree. The arguments in this video are ridiculous; America is trillions of $ in debt so the who pays for it BS is junk, put it on the tab. Automation and servicing should be our societies top priority instead of creating an endless amount of BS jobs to feed the growth machine.

[@humblecourageous3919]

Yes. We need to learn to be sustainable rather than trying to make more profit. I think we have a lot of bumps and grinds to get there. First overpopulation, then under population and then hopefully the earth will find a balance and live sustainably.

[@NotHereAnymore2024]

Population decline is a crisis only for systems that require population growth to sustain: pensions, many large businesses, government finances. That is the reason we have started to hear alarm bells about the coming population declines. A lot of people that currently make a lot of money see their future earnings being threatened. For everything else, it will be much better to have a significantly smaller world population: fewer human conflicts, fewer famines, slowing down rate of ecological disasters, slowing down climate change, giving other species a chance to survive extinction.

[@PureCrisp]

The paternity and maternity leave is a huge deal, need to give people breathing space from their work and they might start having children. I think this also is a contributing factor for Japan and South Korea where the work culture is overwhelming coupled with a larger responsibility to look after their aging family members.

[@ICDeadPeeps]

So I have this theory that big cities promote population decline. Psychologically, people weren't designed to live that close together, packed in like rats. People generally care and value others less, and naturally have fewer children. For example, in South Korea, more than 40% of their population in crammed into Seoul. Smaller, rural communities and villages in S. Korea are disappearing. In North Korea, their birthrate is still positive and their population growth is stable, although the average North Korean is far poorer and impoverished in comparison. However, their population is more spread out than South Korea. Coincidence?

[@Israel_Two_Bit]

@@ICDeadPeeps This should be fairly easy to confirm by looking at the stats of birth rates and fertility rates in rural South Korea and other parts of the world. Also, it would be interesting to see if that trend is the same in Niger and the other Sub-Saharan countries that are carrying the weight of the world's population on their shoulders.

[@vincentseng]

There is a correlation sir, manual farming might be the reason due to more people mean more food. Once we have been very effective to farm then there will be no need for more people. Including growing expensive economy due to more people but dwindling resources, thus people will cut the population as fast as they can (why giver birth when you can't pay for it). Plus, some social burnouts like in East Asia. And lastly the technological boom making dopamine easy to get, why need to have kids when you can get high in dopamine by just using internet. All of these combined into why poorer nations have higher population growth (manual farming and not efficient, expensive tech that they can't buy so more focus on everyday life, and people don't have burnouts where they still thinking about their necessities). Modern life just sucks out all of the essence of live we have been doing since ages ago with those exponentials, but us human still have the primitive brain and can't handle the exponentials.@@ICDeadPeeps

[@katiegreene3960]

The ability to survive on one parent income in the past is imo what gave people the freedom to have more children

[@hamsterjohn]

It also doesn't help that those two countries have high suicide rates due to said overworking (or even more sad the young being overstressed to pass entrance exams to the point of suicide).

[@brianpeterson9290]

I have a feeling that 50-100 years ago folks will look back at this problem and say "You might not believe this, but before robots and AI people actually worried that there wouldn't be enough humans to keep society going." In any case, the fundamental issues here aren't going away. Absent some catastrophe that wipes out the modern world and drastically changes incentives, people aren't going to just decide to get married younger and start having more kids.

[@AnonymousOmniscience]

Only thing I disagree with about this comment is that you phrased falling birth rates as being a problem. It’s not a problem, it’s a solution to all of our problems.

[@lamjeri]

@@AnonymousOmniscience And the beginning of other problems related to workforce and retirement economies.

[@AnonymousOmniscience]

@@lamjeri AI + robots + tax the rich to fund social security. There you go, problem solved.

[@mmanjin]

In the latter decades of the 20th century we were constantly being reminded that the peak oil crisis would come very soon meaning we would begin running out of oil due to increasing demand and dwindling new sources of oil. That of course never happened and never will mainly due to the rapid exponential rise of alternative energy namely wind and solar which are becoming much cheaper and more efficient energy sources which in turn has lead to, among other events, such as the rapid rise of EVs further diminishing the demand for oil. The point is we need to be careful from reading too much into "expert predictions" since they are usually off the mark due to unforeseen variables that come into play. Besides, why should a population decline necessarily be a negative event. Valid arguments can be made either way.

[@lamjeri]

@@AnonymousOmniscience AI + Robots is nice, but that leaves work for a very small percentage of people who can learn very specialized sets of skills to design and fix these machines. If you ever get to a point where manual labor is not needed, vast majority of population has no chance to get a job. As far as taxing the rich goes, I'm not sure how you imagine to do that. You mean that if somebody builds a fortune off of hard work, you take it away from him to fund the rest of society?

[@corba197]

Paris indeed had riots, but exaggerating to say it was burned to the ground only detracts from your credibility. Lots of good points, Ricky. Just wish you resisted the drama a bit better. Thanks for your thoughts.

[@00st307-m]

Yeah I lived in Paris in 2006. There were student protests then - cars and kiosks got burnt to the ground. I asked a bystander what was happening (I had just stepped out of the metro to this surprise, this was before smart phone updates). He said it was “French tradition” and was watching it w a smile. I don’t think people understand that protests + strikes are a COMMON practice in France, it’s part of their cultural tradition.

[@fester2251]

Agreed.

[@trikepilot101]

@@00st307-m I was planning to write something similar to your comment. The French find some reason for a big protest every few years. Remeber the "yellow vests" in 2018?

[@laurenceraper2414]

We can quibble about “Paris burning”, but let’s not lose sight of the valid big point Ricky is making.

[@churblefurbles]

Just cope, the existence of a war zone in your capital city just poisons social cohesion, a small percantage of certain types of outsiders is all that is necessary

[@dan2304]

The declining supply of commodities, this applies to fossil fuels, most industrial metals and minerals and fertilizers phosphorous and potasium, means a serious decline in population is in the future. Much better for aging demographics to reduce population than the harsh forces of societal decline and starvation. Global oil supplies have been in decline since 2018, both narural gas and coal will hit economic depletion within a few decades, when the cost of supply of is more than the ability to pay. Most commodities will be largely depleted within this century.

[@woltersworld]

Derivatives getting some love. My calc teacher would be so proud.

[@jumajumajei]

You mean the CDO's n BTO's right.. ;) The whole HUGE arena of (also other kinds of) financial crimes, frauds and abuses (practically legalized) is completely still left add on to all of this. Monopolization (the great return of the dark-age robber barons) etc. included.

[@hannahmore9118]

A Japanese friend had to move back to take care of elderly mom until she passed, and stayed another year caring for father. She was an only child. There was no hospice care in her parents town. She had to close her business and leave her family to do this. She explained that there were NO other family members to do this. No aunts or uncles, neices or nephews. No one. She said many elderly people are dependant on the government for care, but only in the larger cities. Rural people are out of luck there. And all three of my kids decline to marry and give me grandchildren. I worry who will take care of them if they remain alone and childless. I worked in hospice, no on should look forward to being popped in a nursing home. They tend to be horror shows(in my veiw) even in the better ones. And some Chinese men kidnap North Korean women, selling them to desperate men wanting a wife and children. This is revealed in UN investigations and reports. There are a lot of consequences here.

[@earlysda]

People are told their ancestors were pond-scum - so they act like pond-scum.

[@kimpeater1]

Selfish narcissists like you only had children to have someone take care of you in old age. It's very telling that none of your children want or are able to have children of their own after going through your parenting. Do you think you did a good job? Your results are questionable. I think you will be surprised when the time comes to receive your elder care.

[@kimpeater1]

It's very telling that none of your three children want or are able to have children of their own after your parenting. Do you think you did a good job?

[@enjoystraveling]

@@kimpeater1 I’m guessing there could be much influence besides just their parents, whether these adult children want children, perhaps they were influenced by their friends, by social media, by going to college, by seeing how expensive things are paying back their bills and how expensive their housing and how expensive children are at least in the city life. Or maybe they just didn’t have time to find the right mate since they were busy in there for years or just didn’t find one.

[@eskorekpe1513]

@@kimpeater1 Such a stupid and callous question...?

[@stischer47]

Doing research on my family, my maternal grandfather was one of 16, my maternal grandmother one of 10. I found that the boys were called "Bubba/Brother" and the girls "Sis/Sister" until they were of age (usually 5-8) to choose their own name. Why "waste" a name on a child that may not live?

[@kelleemerson9510]

Never heard of this before. Something I saw in my mothers 1700's family is naming a subsequent child the same name as a deceased one.

[@jirislavicek9954]

I don't believe that. People in the past were very religious, both Catholics and Protestants. To have a child baptised was one of their biggest priorities, and they needed a name for the baptism. They did it even if the child was lame and was very likely to die, to ensure he / she has access to heaven.

[@stischer47]

@@jirislavicek9954 Whether or not you believe it makes no difference. The reason I know it happened is I delved into family history and there were writings addressing this. And while people in the past were more religious in the past did not mean they were baptized as children. In fact, a number of Southern protestant churches did/do not believe in infant baptism. Baptism was a choice and a baby could not make that choice. Perhaps in the Catholic church, if there was one available.

[@Luc-1991]

I believe the masai tribe does this after 3 months because most of them don't make it past 3 months. Never heard about waiting several years tho.

[@justadude1477]

@@stischer47 I’ve researched this topic for a number of years I can’t count, it sounds like this was more specific to your family, it was assuredly not done in mass like you may be mistaken. This is objective fact. It is interesting that your family follows a tradition like that. Is this still practiced by other members?