this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 91 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Its a good thing and we should stop wringing hands over declining population. This is the singular way in which we can mantain a habitable planet for humans, is to have fewer humans.

Pass sensible immigration policies and it becomes a non-issue.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The main problem is that most countries don't have their economic system set up for it. The retirement system also in many cases is not sustainable with a shrinking population. This is going to cause a lot of pain and probably countries will start out with policies aiming to increase birth rates to attempt to maintain the status quo.

You're going to face a lot of resistance trying to actually adapt economic policies to a shrinking population. Especially from older people.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Japan and Italy are both going through this right now. I'm not sure its going particularly well, so I think you are generally correct. We should be putting much more effort into figuring out how to manage this transition, because its both completely necessary, and inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Can't speak for Japan but for Italy an easy way to deal with shrinking population is by allowing more immigration. The one thing the current government is against, and the populace has been conditioned to believe is the main problem causing all sort of issues. Particularly by facilitating an influx of skilled workers, you have from day one taxpayers that can fund your pensions, and that didn't cost you a euro for the first 18 years orbso of their lives (education, health care etc). Of course it's not that trivial as first they should create an attractive job market that makes skilled workers want to go there in the first place but other countries have successfully done that. I'm not counting on this to happen, just saying that it's an option

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

As we continue to replace workers with machines it will be easier… but that’s a slow process.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Japan is like being in the year 2000.

I think if you talk to people in the west they would say the year 2000 is better than now.

They have cheap housing/ rent, the country is safe, plenty of jobs. Sounds great. The only issue japan is having is that gdp isn't increasing but from an individual person point of view things seem better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Sounds great. The only issue japan is having is that gdp isn’t increasing but from an individual person point of view things seem better.

So if you rely on a narrow view of what success looks like (for example, only considering GDP growth), it would be considered not good, but from a lived experience, its fine.

It makes sense that an economy that overshot what its population growth rate can support, it needs to contract.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Now if India would follow suit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is such a dumb myth. The problem is that we refuse to embrace green energy, not that there's too many people.

If the oil lobby didn't block all progress this would have been solved long ago.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Energy isn't our only limited resource.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A few top% people in the world (mostly western countries) are responsible for the majority of emissions

We throw away a billion more times food than we really consume too. And we just dump everything we don't like into the ocean

Everything is a distribution problem, not an availability problem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that the amount of population doesn't match the way we live. You could create any ideal society and say that overpopulation isn't the issue, or create an underpopulated society and say the way we live isn't the issue.

You're saying "we just need to fix the biggest issues of our society in in order for overpopulation to be a non-issue, easy!"

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm saying we would screw up the earth even if we literally had 1/2 the people. By just dumping even more in the ocean and being even less responsible.

We have an absolute abundance of resources and energy and somehow (oil lobby) we manage to be so inefficient that we will never improve that efficiency unless absolutely needed.

If we had half the humans we would waste twice as much.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago

Exactly. Natural attrition is the nicest way to restore balance.