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How should countries deal with falling birth rates? (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 5 months ago by Espiritdescali@futurology.today to c/futurology@futurology.today

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[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 39 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I think asking why population needs to continue to rise?

We got a huge percentage of humans who are struggling. Many under educated. We got slavery. We got wars. We got food issues. We literally were just in a worldwide pandemic.

How about fixing that before we fix "the population" problem?

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We got a huge percentage of humans who are struggling. Many under educated. We got slavery. We got wars. We got food issues.

I'm not convinced that these problems would be addressed by a smaller population. On average, people today are better educated, more peaceful, and better nourished than they were 100 or 500 years ago. I think this is mainly due to technological progress rather than population size.

I think asking why population needs to continue to rise?

I don't think the population needs to rise, but there will definitely be problems if the population shrinks rapidly over just a few generations, one of the main ones being "who will take care of all the old people?". Japan and Korea are already struggling with this, and other countries are not far behind.

[–] shikitohno@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I’m not convinced that these problems would be addressed by a smaller population. On average, people today are better educated, more peaceful, and better nourished than they were 100 or 500 years ago. I think this is mainly due to technological progress rather than population size.

I didn't read it as saying smaller populations would fix this necessarily, but that we should focus on fixing those problems before we worry too much about falling birth rates outside of countries like Japan and Korea that have such elderly populations. Even if letting the population drop doesn't directly cause the prevalence of these problems to drop as well, I think trying to force the matter of growing the population before addressing these problems would likely only aggravate them. We can't necessarily count on technological progress to keep up with infinite population grow, so we'll continue to outpace our ability to find adequate solutions with our ability to generate massive problems for ourselves.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

I think trying to force the matter of growing the population before addressing these problems would likely only aggravate them.

An excellent point.

[–] deft@lemmy.wtf 3 points 5 months ago

yes

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Most economies are rooted in growth based policies. As if there is an unlimited amount of everything for everyone.

And we see this because it is a system that brutally punishes you if you aren't able to have things

(Massive oversimplification)