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Gonna be hard to keep growing the economy with a shrinking population. We've never experienced this before and are probably not prepared for the consequences should it continue.
Good.
Endless economic growth is not only unsustainable but undesirable.
We need 'happiness' growth instead.
Poverty is not the absence of luxuries, it is the absence of wealth. People can be wealthy and not partake of luxuries and amenities.
Would you rather be transported back in time to be a rich noble sh*tting in a pot with no plumbing or heat or A/C, no anesthesia and eating crap food with no modern medicine or dentistry or live in your current time?
Its not about wealth, it is about standard of living. And standard of living will decline without increases in population.
Good.
Endless economic growth is not only unsustainable but undesirable.
We need 'happiness' growth instead.
Endless* economic growth is sustainable. Happiness is directly correlated with ones' standard of living. While poor peasants in India or tribesmen in Africa may self-identify as "happy", I don't see you or other people from developed world migrating to those places. In fact, we see the opposite as migration flows indicate. Those "happy" peasants willingly voluntarily migrate to slums and ghettoes and even then they are still better off on aggregate. All these first world people dreaming about "returning back to nature" are delusional. It means a return to unimaginable suffering and misery. Most of you wouldn't even last a week, as your bodies are supported by modern food, purified water delivery, and medicine, and the people in peak physical shape would last maybe a decade before they too wear their bodies to the bone or die of disease.
*By endless meaning for the next millions of years, obviously the universe will end at some point.
Would you rather be transported back in time to be a rich noble sh*tting in a pot with no plumbing or heat or A/C, no anesthesia and eating crap food with no modern medicine or dentistry or live in your current time?
Its not about wealth, it is about standard of living. And standard of living will decline without increases in population.
Standard of living will decline with increases in population and the problems that causes...climate change, severe weather, water shortages, food shortages, overcrowding, social unrest, crime, and so on, not to mention the effects on other species.
Standard of living will decline with increases in population and the problems that causes...climate change, severe weather, water shortages, food shortages, overcrowding, social unrest, crime, and so on, not to mention the effects on other species.
False. Increase in population increases consumption, increases the labor pool, and the economy. It reduces the taxation pressure as you have more younger people in the workforce supporting fewer elderly, so you can allocate more resources to things like elderly care. In addition, it adds more brains to solve and tackle aforementioned problems you listed through advances in technology.
Crime is not even correlated to population, as the most densely populated places are actually the least violent.
False. Increase in population increases consumption, increases the labor pool, and the economy. It reduces the taxation pressure as you have more younger people in the workforce supporting fewer elderly. In addition, it adds more brains to solve and tackle aforementioned problems you listed through advances in technology.
Crime is not even correlated to population, as the most densely populated places are actually the least violent.
So no rebuttals? Ok.
Here I can even double down. The standard of living in rural areas like your state of NH would decline precipitously as population decreases. Most (actually all) rural areas are not self-sustaining and rely on trade and subsidies (direct and indirect) to maintain the quality of life of residents.
In addition, in countries with declining populations (as in Japan) all of the jobs migrate to the cities at a faster pace where there is enough labor to actually do the work, as the rural areas depopulate of young people. The larger cities would see the effects of depopulation last, as they are somewhat insulated from some of its effects due to migration of people into the cities for jobs. While Japan is in population decline Tokyo is still growing. Same will happen in the US, where more rural areas will be in economic decline while cities will still experience growth until they suck out most of the labor pool from rural counties.
Would you rather be transported back in time to be a rich noble sh*tting in a pot with no plumbing or heat or A/C, no anesthesia and eating crap food with no modern medicine or dentistry or live in your current time?
Its not about wealth, it is about standard of living. And standard of living will decline without increases in population.
You are spouting nonsense. A slow decline in population will not cause the disappearance of indoor plumbing, dentistry and modern medicine. Those things have already been invented, they will not disappear unless better methods are developed to replace them.
A declining population will result in a smaller workforce and that will require society to restructure in such a way that people will be required to do work that is essential for society to function rather than fluff careers like we see today with many college graduates. I see that as a good thing.
Standard of living will decline with increases in population and the problems that causes...climate change, severe weather, water shortages, food shortages, overcrowding, social unrest, crime, and so on, not to mention the effects on other species.
Yup! High density locales have the lowest standard of living. Imagine been forced to shop for food 4-7 times a week at an expensive bodega or convenience store because your tiny kitchen apartment doesn't have enough space to store a week's worth of food, or being entirely dependent on expensive restaurants for sustenance for the same reason. Lower density populations have the flexibility to be self sufficient and flexibility is a key component of a high standard of living.
You are spouting nonsense. A slow decline in population will not cause the disappearance of indoor plumbing, dentistry and modern medicine. Those things have already been invented, they will not disappear unless better methods are developed to replace them.
A declining population will result in a smaller workforce and that will require society to restructure in such a way that people will be required to do work that is essential for society to function rather than fluff careers like we see today with many college graduates. I see that as a good thing.
Again, it depends how deep the population collapse is. For example, the first industries to go will be the high intensity niche industries such as cutting edge research into nuclear fusion for example (that only has maybe a few hundred people-knowledge carriers for the whole civilization). Then goes something like astrophysics and rocket technology. If population collapses sufficiently far, to a few million for the whole country, you better believe even things like plumbing would collapse.
Second, just because something has been invented, doesn't mean it won't disappear. Romans invented concrete, but after the Justinian plague, concrete did not appear again for another thousand years. The technology was simply lost, locked away in old books in languages that nobody except a few scholars could read. Nowadays, the technology hierarchy and supply chains are so complex, most people wouldn't be able to manufacture even such a mundane item as a computer mouse. We already do this in our society. A lot of funding for NASA in the 1980s-90s was justified by the fact that United States wanted to have rocket scientists, as these skills would've simply disappeared otherwise, but were deemed strategic for military purposes. Same thing with Europeans and LHC. They build the large hadron collider to retain particle physicists.
Third, what you don't realize is the opportunity cost. At that point it will be all about preserving the "old" knowledge, but very little of new advances would be generated comparatively if population didn't decline. Those new advances in medicine, the undiscovered drugs, solutions to climate change and recycling, etc etc.
Last edited by Gantz; 09-20-2021 at 12:19 PM..
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