But I suspect there will always be some fundamentalist religious groups who will find reasons to reproduce no matter the economic or environmental realities of the future Earth.
Always like to start the day on a high note ... where's that Addams Family comic book I like to keep handy for that extra kick I need to get the day started off right...
You yourself mention climate change. There are increasing fights over WATER among PEOPLE [1], even as "freshwater" resources are being utilized to an extent where it's estimated that 1/3 of freshwater species are endangered or at risk of becoming endangered [2], microplastics everywhere [3], OTHER species being accelerated into extinction at a continuously increasing rate in general, etc.
Also, what happened to the "promise of automation" and "promise of mass production"? I thought we were all supposed to be "chillin' on the French Riviera while machines did so much that none of us had to work more than, say, 10 hours per week?" [4] ... I.e., shouldn't we be able to make do with fewer workers?? The even bigger laugh, there, is how much everyone is freaking out about "AI" now.
Decline in fertility in a more "organic" way, now (due to economics, impact of EDCs for years, etc.) is far better (for US, even, as a species) than "keeping the accelerator mashed to the floor as we barrel towards the cliff" [5] (when it'll be "Soylent Green" time for basically everyone, one way or another).
[1] https://fortune.com/2023/04/15/colorado-river-shrinking-cali...
[2] https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-the-north-american-be...
[3] https://www.academia.edu/download/59765553/Human_Consumption...
Undoubtedly so.
> Also, what happened to the "promise of automation" and "promise of mass production"?
Those were not based in reality. Or a more generous way to put it is they were based in 1920's reality but you want a 2020's lifestyle now. eg. do you want to have food, healthcare and housing of 1920's? It will suck, especially if there are not enough young workers.
See this recent article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alo...
It's so tiring reading this nonsense rhetoric over and over again.
Population decline resulting from decades of abysmal fertility rates is absolutely a horrible thing. There's no "meme" here to be had.
When people stop working, they stop contributing to society but they don't stop taking from it.
For as long as human society has formed, the solution was either the working population being productive enough for everyone else or the non working dying off soon after the fact.
When fertility rates are in the shitter for a long time, you guarantee that at some point, the working population will be far far lower than what is necessary to support the rest.
A demographic and societal collapse will ensue. Many benefits and safety nets for many people including the working will cease to exist simply because it can no longer be sustained. Once this hits in full force, it will last decades. It's that simple.
And it has nothing absolutely nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or communism or whatever -ism you might want to scapegoat. For as long as humans need to work to survive this will be a problem.
The problems Japan is having, South Korea is looking to speedrun. It's so bad that it's too late to forestall a collapse. Even if the country magically started having replenishing birth rates immediately, in at most a few decades, we'll be seeing a collapse that would last at least 20 years. This is the best case scenario. It's straight up apocalyptic.
This is what a population table looks like for a country that had a fertility rate of 6 at year 0 and then an extinction level rate of 1 for decades (SK is actually decidedly worse at 0.78 now).
(148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns,
(194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns
(208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns
(187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns
(93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns
(46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns
(23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn
It's like climate change. You go decades with everything looking normal at first glance. By the time, everything doesn't look so normal it's to late to do anything other than save your population from extinction. (Assuming you can even do that. A lot of people seem to miss the fact that not one country that has suffered declining fertility rates has managed to reverse the trend despite trying for decades. Not one)