Nearly all developed countries have birth rates below the replacement level. The cluster of reasons for this effect is indeed almost certainly why population levels will level off

And basically none of those reasons are related to the two proposed (“getting our s%%% together” or actual die-offs, both kind of cartoonishly silly). It’s largely the availability of birth control, urbanization, and maybe also old-age safety nets.

The whole world is on the way to doing this (Africa will, too, as they will develop… and, in a note of good news, probably become as economically powerful in the 22nd century as Asia is in the 21st). It’ll lead to a cratering of the working population unless we basically start to eliminate retirement (not desirable!) and enact a ton of pro-natalist policies now (in addition to as much immigration as possible).

A thing people don’t understand is that the biggest resource limit is people. Population decline won’t mean abundance but the exact opposite as the dependency ratio shoots through the roof and will be incredibly stubborn to come down (as to try to reverse it with pro-natalist policies will actually make it significantly worse for a couple decades), especially as willing migrants dry up (yes, I realize how counter-narrative that is, but it’ll happen… in the latter part of this century, Africa will become sick of being the cheap labor source of aging Europe and Asia).

Even with a pessimistic estimate about the rate of progress, fully general AI will be here loooong before population decline decimates the economy, as will good robotics and all the stuff needed to basically put resource gathering and production on autopilot. At that point "on welfare" would easily be the equivalent of living like a millionaire today.

The bigger questions are whether global warming or WW3 will fuck us all before we get there, not to mention the question of whether fully general AI will be its own mega disaster.

Population decline will be a problem in your lifetime. I’ve become disillusioned with the idea that hyper-automation is just around the corner. Observing a Chrysler assembly plant from almost a century ago, vs our current car assembly plants (wiring harnesses still very stubbornly manual), has tempered my expectations of automation progress, as has the slowing of Moore’s Law and the failure of self-driving-cars to materialize in the last few years.

Seeing modern day "best in class" is a great way to become pessimistic about progress, you see the best of now but don't realize it's the worst of "soon". In 8 years you'll reverse course completely based on machining automation, and in 11 we'll have true AGI.

For what it's worth, for me 'getting our shit together' is shorthand for availability of birth control and improving availability of mass education, especially for women. These are the things that have concretely driven reduction in population growth.

I agree about that, but the implication was that we are doing those things to slow or reduce population, not just, you know, because we ought to do them anyway.

Yes, but South Korea is leading the pack. Something unusual since they only industrialized in the 1970s and were poorer than North Korea until the 1980s.

E.G. China.

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