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People aren't entirely autonomist beings, they are a product of the culture they grew up in. The mantras of the 60s-70s, like the Population Bomb, shape where we are now, as that generation is the one with the ruling reigns in their hand. That book was so popular because a lot of people had that underlying fear and sentiment already. In 60 years, the ones ruling will have grown up with a incessant mantra of population decline and they will adjust their behavior accordingly.
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Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
This is, to say the least... contentious. Some older civilizations self-destructed through mismanagement of their available resources. Some grew too large to be sustained in their local environment, at their level of development. Others had a religious or ritualistic practice that ruined themselves and their environment. There are many ways to be stupid, and few of them lead to success.
But at the same time, even inefficient living becomes sustainable if the population stays sufficiently small. Better technology, and wiser behavior, allow for larger populations. But smaller populations afford more room for wastefulness. In our modern example, we could keep burning fossil fuels, neither running-out nor ruining our environment, if the amount of fuel-burners (that is, people) were vastly smaller.
The real question isn't workforce-amount, but dependency-ratio: the ratio of people who are gainfully employed doing useful things (not busy-work), to the total population, that needs to eat and to receive healthcare and to have housing. We can make the workers more productive, we can incentivize hiring at the margin by offering higher wages or on-the-job training and so on... or, we can have fewer dependents. The trouble with the latter is that longevity is rising. If we all gracefully died at 61 years and 11 months, there would be no problem with Social Security. So from an economic point of view, the problem with a shrinking population isn't the shrinkage per se, but the increasing dependency ratio, mainly due to a larger elderly population. I'm hoping to do my part, by dying in late middle-age. Unfortunately my attitude is rare. Until it becomes common, governments are left scrambling to enact pronatalist policies.
Look at the other side of the glass though! If some right choices allowed us to explode in population at an exponential level, what will more right choices and innovation do?? I'm willing to bet on 4 steps forward for every 2 steps back - what I believe this will mean for 2200 is that we will both have prosperous people and a much healthier planet and ecosystems. Reduced population pressure AND much greater investment.
For the depedency ratio, the most likely thing to happen is people will extend out their working age. The number of 65 won't stick if it's not feasible, and retirement age will adjust. That's the most likely thing to change. The people that are no longer able to work and retire because of disability probably won't live another 30 years, at least not with a heavy dose of material consumption. The people that have the potential to consume a lot also have the potential to still be working.
Here's Ehrlich's prediction: LINK Keep in mind the article was written in 2015, and already experts could see Ehrlich was just wrong.
We live in a country where the biggest problem is obesity. Ehrlich thought we would all starve. He was wrong. So are you.
The population will decline soon, if it hasn't already. The only thing left is to foster intelligent discussion of what this new world will be like, both during transition and after population levels out. You may join in if you like.
The problem is so many people learned this when they were young and they still believe it with a religious fervor even though Erhlich was demonstrably wrong. And many of these people are in charge of Western governments and policymaking.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of being shamed for not caring about declining human population. For most of history, we had far fewer people than we do now!
The only reason we "need" (extreme sarcasm) a growing population is to prop up the Central Banking economic paradigm of ever increasing growth, debt and inflation.
I agree 100%.
"The human population is decreasing."
Awesome! Maybe we can finally stop ruining the planet, making animals go extinct, creating wars, and polluting everything we touch. Aren't we to blame for "climate change?"
I love that Japan and Korea and other 1st world countries don't give one damn about this, certainly not to the extent they would allow open borders just for people to procreate.
The more educated you are, the less likely you are to have kids or multiple kids compared to a less educated or developing country citizen. And that's fine by me. There's more to life than just having kids.
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Originally Posted by MacInTx
The purpose of living beings is to reproduce. Animals and plants, insects and man. All exist to reproduce.
When mankind decided to make pregnancy prevention and abortion acceptable, reproduction became unnecessary.
Yes and no.
The purpose of life is to survive and reproduce, yes just like the animals and plants, but not when doing so would endanger the life of your offspring or the financial and mental wellbeing of yourself.
And considering the state of wars, inflation, cost of living, cost of healthcare, childhood obesity, state of public education, society polarization, high divorce rates, and high rate of children born to unwed mothers, reproducing in such an environment would be downright irresponsible for the parent and the child.
Awesome! Maybe we can finally stop ruining the planet, making animals go extinct, creating wars, and polluting everything we touch. Aren't we to blame for "climate change?"
I love that Japan and Korea and other 1st world countries don't give one damn about this, certainly not to the extent they would allow open borders just for people to procreate.
The more educated you are, the less likely you are to have kids or multiple kids compared to a less educated or developing country citizen. And that's fine by me. There's more to life than just having kids.
Yes and no.
The purpose of life is to survive and reproduce, yes just like the animals and plants, but not when doing so would endanger the life of your offspring or the financial and mental wellbeing of yourself.
And considering the state of wars, inflation, cost of living, cost of healthcare, childhood obesity, state of public education, society polarization, high divorce rates, and high rate of children born to unwed mothers, reproducing in such an environment would be downright irresponsible for the parent and the child.
But at least through the birth of a child, mankind has a future.
I'm thinking people are not realizing that humans (homo sapiens) are (species of) animals within the animal kingdom. Top of the food chain maybe, with a greater capacity to reason (contemplate their death), walk upright on two feet with less hair, but in nature, the human species, are animals within the animal kingdom. With that said, one common denominator that has been observed by science among species that have gone extinct, the reproduction of that species went down. For some, hunters took them out and they could not reproduce themselves faster than humans could kill. However, for others there are other factors (like disease) that caused their reproduction to decrease.
Not all countries will survive the future, as falling TFR (total fertility rates) dictates they will simply lose the labor force and military force, they will need, in order to over come their rivals.
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Originally Posted by Rocko20
I love that Japan and Korea and other 1st world countries don't give one damn about this, certainly not to the extent they would allow open borders just for people to procreate.
Countries around the globe that have had staunch immigration laws are changing their policies to account for the fewer members of their labor force. Just to name the two mentioned ...
Japan: "Japan’s immigration policy underwent a fundamental shift in 2019 with the establishment of the “specified skilled worker†program, says sociologist and migration expert Higuchi Naoto. By allowing non-Japanese with limited skills to secure work visas and creating a pathway to permanent residence, the Japanese government had officially opened the door to immigration on a broader scale. Yet it has steadfastly denied doing so."
Korea: "Over the past two decades, South Korea’s well-documented demographic challenges have driven a host of policy reforms to encourage more inbound immigration. While these reforms are promising signs of progress, some of these measures risk reinforcing and exacerbating ethnocentric and patriarchal social structures, laws, and policies that actually harm the women they are intended to help. South Korean officials need to think of immigration in more holistic and equitable terms, not merely as a way to achieve population replacement."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocko20
The more educated you are, the less likely you are to have kids or multiple kids compared to a less educated or developing country citizen. And that's fine by me. There's more to life than just having kids.
Some people believe that by having a child they're leaving behind their legacy when they die. Just a thought ...
And, I'm hopeful that one-day people will learn, that stereotyping, is not all that it is cracked up to be.
Female education and its impact on fertility Elevator pitch
"The negative correlation between women's education and fertility has been observed across regions and time, although it is now weaker among high-income countries. Women's education level could affect fertility through its impact on women's health and their physical capacity to give birth, children's health, the number of children desired, and women's ability to control birth and knowledge of different birth control methods. Each of these mechanisms depends on the individual, institutional, and country circumstances experienced. Their relative importance may change along a country's economic development process."
As an optimist, I believe there is more to life (that which sets us apart from all the other animals in the kingdom) than just survival and reproduction. Leaving the world better than you found it, is a goal worth achieving and yes, by having children that may one-day carry the task forward, when you're no longer here, is a good place to start.
Ellis, thank you for that great post, where you wrote:
Quote:
Japan: "Japan’s immigration policy underwent a fundamental shift in 2019 with the establishment of the “specified skilled worker†program, says sociologist and migration expert Higuchi Naoto. By allowing non-Japanese with limited skills to secure work visas and creating a pathway to permanent residence, the Japanese government had officially opened the door to immigration on a broader scale. Yet it has steadfastly denied doing so."
What worries me about Japan's “specified skilled worker†program is where are these skilled workers to come from? I'd have the same worries about any nation whose solution is to import the needed skills; our own floundering around for a solution to the immigration crisis includes some talk about importing skilled workers and fewer teeming masses of the barely literate. As a bit of a history fan I know that from the 1850s and into the 1920s we did just that, we let in teeming masses of hungry low-skilled immigrants and BAM! we ended WW-2 as THE premier world power. Hmmmm......
Crappy, over populated third world nations have precious few skilled workers to start with and few places to teach skills. If Japan gets skilled workers from other advanced nations that's just cannibalizing the pool of skilled workers as most other advanced nations have the same demographic challenges as Japan.
{Here in the USA, the Governor of Texas boasts about job growth in his state but much of that is relocation of firms from other states to Texas to get sweetheart tax deals. Texas is cannibalizing jobs from other states, i.e., no true job creation has occurred, and there are gaping holes left behind in those states that lost jobs to Texas.}
I would posit that India and China may have some skilled workers to spare but not sure. We talk a lot in this excellent thread about how China is facing population issues but also that a lot of Chinese workers are facing age discrimination and job loss after age 35. The problem in nations with population stagnation and decline seems more about how to support the retiree population than finding workers, but I think that's more of a case by case situation.
Here in the USA we have a shortage of skilled workers, I've seen estimates as high as eight million skilled workers. In another thread that might someday occur here we could discuss how we got here and what we should do about it. Meanwhile, here in the Phoenix area, there is hand-wringing about the mega-billion dollar TSMC semi-conductor chip fab now in the final stages of construction just up the road from me -- the start of production may be set back a year because they can't find the skilled labor to run the place. Ouch! We could bring in workers from TSMC in Taiwan but then Taiwan will be short that many skilled workers. No easy answers.
I'm not sure that simply contracting out the work to other nations is the answer. We've been happy to contract out our chip making (and steel-making, electronics and ship building) to Taiwan (and Korea) but the realization has been growing for years that Taiwan will eventually be subsumed by mainland China. Our stance on Taiwan has been a joke since 1949 and is merely a relic of our cold war opposition to anyone or any nation calling itself communist. Even in the early 1960s, the insiders at the top of the JFK administration joked about our idiotic stance on Taiwan but didn't know what to do about it other than kick the can down the road and not "lose" Taiwan to communism. (I read this in a book called The Best and The Brightest about our obsession to fight communism anywhere and everywhere.) Simply contracting out work to other nations might work if we didn't have the toxic capitalism vs communism dynamic, but a solution appears out of reach.
So, here we are. Despite massive increases in productivity the past 30 years from the automation revolution and the millions of jobs that went away we are facing a shortage of skilled labor.
I'm sure things will get figured out and I hope I live long enough to see it all work out. But the horizon is stormy.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 01-03-2024 at 12:57 PM..
Crappy, over populated third world nations have precious few skilled workers to start with and few places to teach skills. If Japan gets skilled workers from other advanced nations that's just cannibalizing the pool of skilled workers as most other advanced nations have the same demographic challenges as Japan. ...
Here in the USA we have a shortage of skilled workers, I've seen estimates as high as eight million skilled workers. In another thread that might someday occur here we could discuss how we got here and what we should do about it. Meanwhile, here in the Phoenix area, there is hand-wringing about the mega-billion dollar TSMC semi-conductor chip fab now in the final stages of construction just up the road from me as the start of production may be set back a year because they can't find the skilled labor to run the place. ...
Truly “crappy†nations are indeed thus bereft. There aren’t too many electrical engineers in Afghanistan. But there are next door in Pakistan. Why aren’t the collective “we†(the US and other prosperous countries) not falling all over ourselves, importing these worthies? Come to think of it, Mexico has several fine universities, including Monterrey Institute of Technology. Why isn’t there a concerted push to offer H1B visas to alumni of the Mexican MIT?
Thinking globally (is that taboo?), shouldn’t we be moving the most productive people to the most productive nations, to be globally the most productive? If we’re going to solve nuclear fusion as an energy source, explore other planets, build self-aware AI and figure out why falling open-faced sandwiches always land with the butter-side hitting the ground…. If we’re going to be hunting for more geniuses in a smaller aggregate population pool, because you know, the population is “shrinking†– then why isn’t there a concerted effort at massive, trans-national immigration?
Ellis, thank you for that great post, where you wrote:
What worries me about Japan's “specified skilled worker†program is where are these skilled workers to come from? I'd have the same worries about any nation whose solution is to import the needed skills; our own floundering around for a solution to the immigration crisis includes some talk about importing skilled workers and fewer teeming masses of the barely literate. As a bit of a history fan I know that from the 1850s and into the 1920s we did just that, we let in teeming masses of hungry low-skilled immigrants and BAM! we ended WW-2 as THE premier world power. Hmmmm......
This is only partially the case; certainly there were millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who were largely working class people but nonetheless they came from highly advanced cultures with a deep heritage of science, math, literature, and the arts. Their children became well educated and their grandchildren went to university on the G.I. bill.
The people coming in to the U.S. today by and large are more of a "peasant" class i.e. very poor farm workers, villagers, urban laborers and the like. What's more, they don't seem to be aspirational as were previous generations of immigrants; they seem to be instead the very definition of migrants, i.e. people who move around. I'm not convinced this is a stable situation. Many of them are here illegally, they know they're illegal, and so right from the start they are not as respectful of U.S. laws and authority as are more traditional immigrants.
How does this relate to global migration? Well, countries like Korea and Japan, which suddenly need more young hands to do the work, can observe the mess that mass migration has made of European and (increasingly) American society, and will not open their countries similarly.
By the way, science fiction writer David Brin in his 1990 novel Earth predicted that by 2038, the system of nationstates will have broken down as global warming ran amok and people began migrating to more livable climates. For example, the frozen lands of northern Canada and Siberia would thaw and become massive farming regions. Starvation will be a thing. No one will be allowed to burn fossil fuels.
His view of what was then 50 years in the future was quite grim, though certain aspects of it were prophetic. The globe does indeed appear to be warming up, for whatever reason, and mass migration is starting to be a significant phenomenon.
However, what he didn't get right is the notion that national governments would break down. I don't see that happening now, and certainly won't happen within 15-20 years either, though a major war is definitely a possibility unless the major powers can get better leadership soon.
Blister, thanks for another great post. The old European immigrants did have a solid work ethic, a quest to better themselves and a strong sense of self which I'm not sure is in many of the downtrodden peasant class we're now seeing crossing our border.
That's why I like the Asian and Indian immigrants, they value education. Half my doctors are Asian or Indian and they're good. Look at the annual Scripps Spelling Bee, most of those kids are of Indian extraction.
Interesting times.
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Blister, thanks for another great post. The old European immigrants did have a solid work ethic, a quest to better themselves and a strong sense of self which I'm not sure is in many of the downtrodden peasant class we're now seeing crossing our border. ...
With the exception of mid-20th century refugees from totalitarian countries in Europe, most immigrants were from the lower classes, or as we've been saying now for several posts, "the peasantry". Take for example Italian immigrants circa 1900. Most were from impoverished southern Italy. They weren't aristocrats or professionals from the industrialized north. This isn't to pick on Italians, but to note, that affluent and well-educated people tend not to immigrate, unless there's a fascist/communist/etc. type of political vice squeezing them.
The difference that we're seeing now, with today's migrants (using the term "migrants" instead of "immigrants"), is that they're not leaving behind their birth-country. Again to use the example of Italians in 1900, those folks may have retained a special fondness for their home-culture, the cooking and language and music and so on, but it is unlikely that most of their earnings in NYC would be remitted back to Palermo. With today's migrants, there remains a transcontinental connection. This renders those folks, who are at the bottom of the economic scale, akin to the "citizens of nowhere" at the top of the economic scale, who might have homes in the US and in Europe and in Singapore, speak multiple languages and possibly even hold multiple passports.
Where this dovetails into the shrinking-population theme, is that whether we have migrants or immigrants, there should be a sieving process to find and to educate the most talented. They are the brilliant inventors, programmers, artists and authors of the future, regardless of their national origin or immigration status. If we worry about fewer Einsteins because we're going to only have 2 billion people instead of 8, then we need to be four times as clever and tenacious in plucking-out candidate Einsteins from whichever milieu. Again, this will be a trans-national (global) effort... not a narrowly national one. Do we have the willingness to do that?
What about "peasants" who want to make something more of themselves, which is often the point? They're not coming here to be peasants. That's why immigrants at all economic levels have high rates of starting businesses etc.
PS, in my region (a lot more immigration than anywhere in Ohio), a large percentage of all immigrants have tech-related degrees.
PS2, the US will need a heavy dose of immigration just to keep our worker/dependent balance from tanking like it has in many other places.
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We could bring in workers from TSMC in Taiwan but then Taiwan will be short that many skilled workers. No easy answers.