As we've seen we're pretty capable of locking ourselves in our houses for months at a time. If it was a seriously dangerous plague like the black plague then it would burn itself out pretty quickly.
Agreed that there are more layers to it. The cost of living and having and supporting a kid pretty high. Childcare fees, university tuition, student loans. Some friends of mine want kids but can't afford to when most of their salary goes towards rent (also high) and supporting themselves/their partner. Sweden seems to have improved their system to up their birth rate but in a lot of countries, policies aren't designed to support families, they're to drive the economy. Like in the U.S. you can only get something like 6 months of maternity leave. I don't really like how the author is totally blaming population decline on women and education. That's a factor, yes, but not the only one. :/ Spoiler "Why are fertility rates falling? It has nothing to do with sperm counts or the usual things that come to mind when discussing fertility. Instead it is being driven by more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children."
I never said that I didn’t believe you about the declining birth rates. I said that I didn’t believe you that it was common for women to be promiscuous (you kept talking about sowing wild oats and being a player, so I assumed that that’s what you meant) and not marry until after 40. You gave me one article to counter that disbelief which looked at one country and didn’t mention any others. I said that it was just one country and still fell under my “not wanting to get married” clause. You may have been talking about the birth rate, but I was talking more about marriage and ignoring the birth rate argument except to say that I had felt pressure to find someone and marry because female fertility is supposed to peak at 23.
This is only really an issue from an economic point of view because countries are in a large amount of debt. If you look at the natural progression then what would happen is the population would lower, houses would become cheaper, perhaps there would be a high demand for jobs, and then there would be a baby boom. Of course increasing technology and immigration throws a wrench into things as they'll try to use technology and an immigrant work force to replace the declining population.
That's now, but the problem is next generations coming up. When there's fewer young ones with majority being the last gen, it makes epidemic more dangerous ( old people= weak immune). When large number of young ones die (pandemic) in a already strained population there's the problem of reducing more strains of DNA to pass over. It doesn't seem possible now, but when circumstances come up in future it will seem inevitable. The irony is that the "isolation" has played small role in curbing numbers, to an extent just prolonged the infection, with increasing suffering to the poor and stalling businesses. Covid-19 is still going strong, and will still see spikes..check WHO.
All I can say is that they better start researching arifical wombs. Nearly all the women in my family don't want kids, and of those that do...well, one is bisexual with hopes to have a female partner in the future, and the other only wants one child at most, and honestly I'm not sure on even that when it comes to her. Uhm, one of the major reasons I won't have a child is because I'd have to give birth to them, and that's just not for me. While giving birth is a wonderful experience to some, I don't like the fact I'd have to mess up my body and go through pain for it. Adopting/fostering just seems so much more up my alley. What I'm trying to say is: an artifical womb, in my opinion, would solve this delimma. I do admit I'm not thinking about this too hard however..
Exactly. As soon as conditions become more favorable there will be a boom. Edit: Spoiler Not having to go through pain and wrecking your body would definitely be great. In my family, most of the women have had kids or want kids. From what I hear of my extended family, it's mostly two or three kids per couple. I hope to have 3 too, but I wouldn't mind it too much if I end up having none. Looking at it based only on one family at a time can give completely different pictures. It might be the culture. Like Anra said, I've felt plenty of pressure to have children. Even unsolicited advice from someone at work saying how I'll die old, alone and miserable if I don't hurry and have kids asap, because I was already 28, single, and 'late'. (That coworker is from the same culture as my extended family). My mother has been worrying about me not having kids since I was about 23 .
Epidemic means that more people than usual have the disease or whatever. Pandemic means that it's very widespread. Doesn't really have much to do with the age of the people catching it. In any case there's nothing strained about the population. There would still be millions of people around.
Well in defence of the author, he did mention targeting women rights isn't the solution here.. Hmm though I do agree with you to the cost of living not being helpful to have kids.
That logic would only apply to a disease like the Corona virus where there are a bunch of asymptomatic people walking about spreading the disease. With a seriously deadly disease there will be nothing of the sort and isolation would work quite well.
I haven't done the research about overpopulation being a myth or not so I can't comment on it. As for the pollution issue, even if only a small portion of the world are the cause pollution will still decrease if world population decreases. It's not as though developed nations are exempt from declining population. You can even say that they are more prone to population decrease. The article also mentioned about how African populations are going to balloon or at least make up a higher proportion of global population in the future. It mentions how this could create greater tensions due to racism. While this is true, the root of this problem is racism. That part of the article seems to be suggesting that the rest of the world needs to be increasing their populations in order to counteract the population growth in Africa. Why not try to focus on controlling population in Africa instead? Also as stated, this has to deal with controlling symptoms instead of dealing with the cause (racism). I think the economy is a legitimate concern. However, taking women out of the work force in order to have more babies is also going to lower GDP and result in some stagnation of the economy. The dip in the economy probably won't be as bad as having retired people outnumbering working adults buy it's still a factor especially in the short term. Even if all women stopped working right now and focused on having babies, it'll still take ~20 years for the benefits to show up. I mentioned artificial wombs in my first post and it seems like it's not too far off in the future: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-50056405/the-world-s-first-artificial-womb-for-humans The decline in population is not extreme so we'll most likely survive until such things are viable and cost-effective. The real problem is that people are living so much longer now past retirement...
Millions of what kind of people? Living in what situation? Sure the problem isn't important now, but it will be in 50-80 yrs, or even sooner. Just because we have billions in numbers, we aren't safe from slow extinction. This might just be precursor, helping calamities ahead to have more casualties. Imagine - we have 7-8 billions now, even if it shows decline to 1-2 billions it will have drastic influence to human-biosphere.
You forget the mortality rate of African countries. People do not live till as old as in developed countries. People die from simple illnesses like Malaria and even starvation. Like you said, racism is an issue but to me it's more of xenophobic nations like Japan not promoting legal immigration which would alleviate their issues 25 million or more people with COVID-19 in Iran alone. You guys are underestimating the incompetence of poor countries governments https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-been-infected-with-coronavirus-idUSKBN24J07V
And where did you find that deadly diseases should have more symptoms? Isolation would work to ones that have low infection rate. And isolation in itself is not possible for extended periods. And a society can never do a ideal isolation, it will only be perfectly effective on primary infected who are handful.
I never said women should be taken out.. That's why I even included that question in the main post, I don't have a solution, I'm just clarifying what's the problem that's being stated.
During the middle ages when the plague hit Europe, millions of people died. When the plague ended (ish), living standards grew exponentially. People found work easier, some immigrants were welcomed as work force, and we entered a period of generel financial and personal prosperity. The human race won't go extinct because birth rates are declining. They have been fluctuating for quite some time now. We have survived way worse calamities than this.
If we ever do go extinct. It'll never be from declining birth rates. Just look at past history, specifically the black plague. It wiped out nearly half the population in europe and guess what, we're still here. Back then, they had it far worse off than the current society today, yet they survived and thrived. Compared to that, the low birth rates are truly nothing to be worried about and also because of our instincts. There will always be youths who are young, dumb and full of c*m. There will always be accidental pregnancy's and children born. Life goes on, it always finds a way.
The simple solution is to use donated sperms and eggs and create 100 children and then put them in a battle royale. The last one standing is the best gene. And then, you go overdrive!